Square Enix Sends Babylon's Fall to the Grave in February 2023

insert joke about the game falling

But yeah, this will make at least three people upset.

Wow, I would have hoped things like this and Anthem would have put people like Sony off of the whole GaaS thing, but unfortunately they sound intent on going all in.

This kind of thing is highly unfortunate, particularly for those folks who bought the game and enjoy it. The game will be rendered unplayable and that's just sad..

We all knew this was coming, but taking the game offline completely on a set date is brutal. Suggests that absolutely no one is playing it.

Its almost like this being a live service game was a mistake. When will they learn.

I still remember the excitement when it was first announced as a PS exclusive. What happened here! Feels like the victim of Platinum trying to do too much at the same tine

At least they announced this rather fast instead of just bleeding money into it.

That's the other side of the live service games. On one hand you get tons of content. On another - once the game shuts down, it becomes unplayable.

It would be awesome to make such games fully playable offline once the servers go dark forever, but sadly practically no one does so.

@Ooccoo_Jr it's like NFTs. Almost everyone know they're a waste of time, yet they keep churning them out constantly, knoeing that it'll fail.

What a disaster. At least they are quitting while they are ahead though. My sympathies to anyone who bought a collector's edition. Talk about a waste of money.

Really wanted this game to work, but the Art, Vision of the story just didn't work

This game just wasted platinum games time and squareenix money, to think squareenix could use that money to make nier automata 2 instead..

It's not fair to blame its failure on it being a live service game or use its demise to prove live service games aren't desirable.

This game failed because it was terrible. It was a shoddy, dated mess that was lacklustre in every department; graphics, audio, storytelling, gameplay, live service implementation, thematically inconsistent, you name it and it was lacking.

That's why it failed, it was crap to the core.

That's funny, I just purchased this game from Best Buy for $20 a week or so ago. Now I see it back at full price, lol. Guess I should play it sooner than later, before it becomes a coaster 😂😂

Why not make it free to play at this point, I mean what do they have to lose?

SteamDB says it all. This game had an all time peak of 1,188 players and today the high was 9. It's a shame that the live service model will end up rendering this game not playable from that date but perhaps it really wasn't worth it in the first place.

Another victim of the live service model, that model has done a lot of damage in recent years.

Rip to the dozen playerbase.
Guess I'll never be able to try it out now, unless my retailer decides to hand out free copies 🤔

@Ooccoo_Jr Money. I’m sure they can see the player retention metrics for those who bought the game. Being free would only cost the publish money if no one sticks around long enough to buy anything.

So does this mean that people who paid money for the game can no longer play it?? Wtf will they get a refund or something? Once a game is purchased at least some form of it should remain playable

@Rob_230 I don’t remember anyone being excited for it lol

@WadeIsInsane incredibly anti consumer. Way too much of a risk purchasing new ip live service games when they can just stop working with no repercussions for the companies making them. And this is where Sony is investing big in, great....

This news further reinforces why 99.99999% of games I purchase/play are single-player, offline games.

I blame the pandemic for giving us these “rushed” games, first Elex 2, then Anthem and now this. No love for science fiction.

I would actually try it if it goes to ps plus before it shuts down like what killzone did

Looking forward to the live service future that Sony is investing so much in.

Utterly disastrous. I feel like there are so many live service games that there aren't enough gamers going around to play them all lol.

This sort of thing is why I'll never splash out on an untested MMO or live service game. Buying a game new and then having it be unplayable after a year is absurd.

Gravity Rush 2 also bombed and quickly had online support yanked, but at least. aside from obtain some costumes, you can still do everything in that game.

Platinum really needs a win. For their sake, I hope Bayonetta 3 does well.

@themightyant I don’t disagree but it did see the light of day and people were charged $60 and within a year it’s not even a game anymore. Luckily I didn’t buy it but the industry needs regulation and protections put in for gamers. It’s a ridiculous situation and it’s happening more often and with everyone seemingly intent on chasing GaaS money it’ll happen more often.

@jFug "99.99999% of games I purchase"

How many games have you purchased?

(Where's Sheldon when you need him?)

Well, it's not like they had lack of feedback. But everyone and their mother is going after that Destiny-like cash cow, when they don't even realize that people hate how Destiny is monetized to hell and back, the only reason it doesn't sink now is that people are way too invested/addicted already.

Not played it myself but I do feel sorry for those who went out and purchased it

@Stocksy why do we state intervention? If people choose buy a GaaS they do so with their eyes open. If it fails and gets closed down in a year that's unfortunate but that's the nature of GaaS, there are no guarantees. This game didn't fail because its a GaaS, it failed because its rubbish, the reviews all said it was crap, plenty of warning out there that the game isn't worth the money.

If people choose to preorder, buy at launch or not do due diligence before they part with their money that's on them. We don't need and shouldn't advocate for a Nanny State.

This isn't the same thing as gambling mechanics in games which should be regulated and already have laws protecting us but are being argued against by companies like EA.

Where's the request for regulation against regular games that are absolute rubbish, like Life of Black Tiger for example, which sell for £50? Buyer's remorse is not a reason to call for legislation.

@Rob_230 Was it a mistake? How much money did they make on sales and micro transactions (A) vs the cost to make the game (B)? If A >= B; then from their perspective, it wasn't a mistake. Even if A < B; as long as most live service games they produce are profitable; then they can absorb a few that weren't. Remember a gamers definition of a failure, and a for-profit companies definition can vary quite a bit.

@Ooccoo_Jr A live service game doesn't have to be good (by review, or player opinion), they just have to make enough money (in aggregate) that it was worth trying.

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending live service games, I will never play these types of games; but keep in mind that their definition of failure (A < B) is different from ours.

The header image kills me.

@LiamCroft I'm flabbergasted that you wrote "complete shut down of service" rather than "Babylon Fell". How do you even work here? 😂

its a shame because when they first showed this game off i was pretty excited for it , then for some reason it vanished ( and should have stayed vanished). then when it came back it looked nothing like what they first showed off. i'm glad i didn't bother playing this , but like i said , it could have been pretty good.

@rjejr 😁 needs to up his pun game for the sub headers. Could've had, "Square Enix Sends Babylon's Fall to the Grave in February 2023"
'Babylon now between Iraq and a hard place'

@themightyant thanks mate. I just saw your post which made perfect sense and took it from there 😁👍

Oh no, who could have seen this one coming?!😱😒🤷‍♂️

I don’t know much about the game other than it having very few players and being £10 physical for some time now… but can’t they tweak it so it just runs offline in single-player? Even if it loses a lot of the balance along the way? Never seen a single video of it though so not sure how the game actually works. Shame for those who paid a lot for it.

@Rob_230 I hope people weren’t excited just because it was exclusive. Hope they had other reasons!

It all spiraled downward after the 2nd trailer which I believe was when they also said it would be GaaS

@SplooshDmg I dunno. It took Bayonetta 2 releasing on two platforms to top a million sales. Technically the same was true of the multiplatform release of the original on PS3/360. These games really don't sell amazingly well.

But then, nearly every major new entry of a series on Switch sees its best sales on that platform, even if not to a significant degree.

I don't think it'll fail, but I also don't think it's going to significantly outsell previous entries.

Platinum needs another NieR: Automata-tier success, IMO.

@SplooshDmg I don't really enjoy these games, but both of the previous ones were critically acclaimed and loved by the series' relatively small fanbase, so I'd be surprised if it ends up being a disappointment.

Aside from the inevitable salty reaction you'll get from people who played the original on one of the power consoles and want a PS5/XSX entry. Something something "looks like a PS2 game."

I do hope Nintendo continues commissioning exclusives from them like Bayo 2/3 and Astral Chain. They always seem to turn out pretty well.

I'm sad because it's Platinum and hate to see an embarrassment like this attached to them. I'm also sad because they should be making Vanquish 2 instead.

Well, when I think about those individuals, who successfully pitched this would-become-mess to Sony, I feel like laughing.

They had £90 version of this, imaging paying that.

I'm the sure the entire less than 10 people will be sad hearing this news.

This is why GaaS really don't sit well with me.

So are people going to be refunded?

And another live service game bites the dust. Ahhh I love starting my day off like this. 😁

@TheCollector316 I would like to speak to both of the people who enjoyed this game.

@Mathieu_B
You know the answer, my friend.

@TheCollector316 Yeah, I know... I should have put "/s" I sucks that you pay for a game and then it's gone. To be clear though, I didn't buy Babylon's Fall. It just sucks for those few who did.

@Mathieu_B

I had a similar experience with DC Universe Online. I bought the disc, played the game and realized it was very shallow. I figured out quickly that game wouldn't do well, so I traded the game in. A few months later, the game went free-to-play. If I didn't trade that game in, I would have wasted my money.

hehe. was waiting for this announcement. i have not seen a botched release from such a prominant publisher in a very long time. i mean, according to steam charts, there were times where there was only ONE concurrent player — a mere two months after its release. not sure people realize how much of a dumpster fire this game was. all this points to a nintendo acquisition of platinum games in the near future. i sure hope that is the case and it's not tencent or netease that make the purchase as we all know how that will end...

@TheCollector316 Oh wow... At that point, it's almost like a premium that you pay to play the game before everyone else (or at least that's what it is in hindsight). I'm glad you got some money back when you traded it in!

This is why physical vs digital doesn't matter like it used to. When stuff like this happens to games that rely on servers, a dead game is a dead game and that disc is nothing more than a cool looking coaster now

Does seem brutal shutting games down completely, even unpopular ones. Can't they just leave it running unmanaged as it is?
I mean games from previous generations are left up for years, seemingly just because they have been forgotten about sometimes.

@themightyant if you're only renting games for an unknown period of time it should be reflected in the price better yet they shouldn't even sell them they should just release them as part of subscription services I mean what they really care about is the money they'll make from those sweet sweet microtransactions if they're successful lol

i knew it will be like this after i played the demo, outcome just not what i expected, the blame definitely is on SE, a rushed project, PG was not given enough time to polish things up...they should make it free to play rather than shut it down directly

here's a thought maybe if it was an offline campaign game zelda like id of got it day one.