Rumbleverse, the melee-based battle royale title published by Epic Games and developed by Iron Galaxy Studios, is going offline on the 28th February. It's a surprising turn of events, given that the game is only around six months old. We've seen less popular live service titles last quite a bit longer, after all.
Rumbleverse was well received when it first launched in August last year, and it remains a well crafted, enjoyable twist on a genre that is notoriously difficult to break into. But evidently, that's not enough to keep a project like this afloat for very long.
But at least refunds will be offered to existing players. The official announcement reads: "Any player who has spent money on Rumbleverse is eligible for a refund of money spent on or in the game. This includes the purchase of a Rumbleverse Battle Pass or Brawlla Bills on any platform. We will share a FAQ page with additional refund information soon."
What's more, an update will be released later today that unlocks additional content for all players. The post continues: "The current Battle Pass will be granted to everyone. Your XP gains will be doubled so you can fast-track unlocks for every rank. Quads, Trios, Duos, and Solos will be live and we’ve unlocked additional accessories and emotes in the game for free as well."
At this point, we're all used to seeing live service games get ditched when they don't quite meet expectations — but six months? That's a shockingly short lifespan for a title that seemed to be well supported. We suppose it just goes to show that live service projects are simply never a safe bet, even for publishers like Epic Games.
How do you feel about this? Did you play Rumbleverse? Feel free to grapple in the comments section below.
[source rumbleverse.com]
Comments 27
Makes me happy seeing all these live service games go bust, hopefully these devs and other devs watching stick to single player games in the future. Live service is too much of a risk, especially for smaller studios. Even the big boys like square and ubisoft have failed miserably with their attempts.
@UltimateOtaku91 Not going to happen - not when the rewards of being "the next Fortnite" juggernaut are as big as they are.
Another one bites the dust.
I think it's stuff like this that's making people increasingly weary of live service games.
Obviously 'live service' is a very broad term — and can even apply to primarily single-player games in some cases — but the negativity that surrounds it is unsurprising when you see news stories like this.
I’ve played a few of these live service games but none of them hold a candle to Fortnite. It’s the one that always keeps me coming back.
At least it was free. RIP to this game that I slagged off on reveal and promptly forgot about.
Buh-buh-but all the big YouTubers told me it was the best battle royale ever made. Certainly they couldn't be wrong nor would they ever think of lying to me!
hope Dave Lang is okay
Looks like we're on a nice once a week streak of a live service getting canned, hopefully a few of those live service games Sony has planned can somehow morph into single player games 🤞
Doesn't this begin to make people not spend, or even start in the first place, with a live service game for fear of it being shut down?
The Netflix Effect is happening to live service games.
Eventually the risk/reward proposition of chasing those Fortnite v-bucks will settle within the industry. It’s already pretty much killed off Ubisoft and could well cause a few more casualties before the dust truly settles… but the actual riches are far more hard won than Fortnite made it look.
The game was pretty fun, but I must admit I only played it a couple of times. Just not enough time, unfortunately.
@Anke That’s a pretty apt way of putting it. Games these days often demand more of a time investment than a monetary one, and it’s much much harder to make up for lost time.
I actually tried this on Xbox to get Microsoft rewards and won my first match...seemed alright
@UltimateOtaku91 I think it's weird celebrating games "failing". A lot of work went into making this, and I'm sure people enjoyed it.
And here we go. Epic has Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys. They tried a 4th game, and realised that yeah, people don't have the time or funds to devote to that many at once. So something has to give. Even when the juggernaut does it.
Heck look at all the others that have come and gone from smaller publishers.
And here we have Sony wanting 12 of them in a matter of years. We all know what's gonna happen.
Either only one or two land and the rest are a sunk cost, or none of them land because yet again, people already have their live services of choice and won't budge.
The issue with live service games isn't the live service but the fact the people making them don't know how to make them.
@MFTWrecks I see you there lol
It seems a successful live service game needs to come out of the gate running, has there been one that had a slow start but succeeded later on? Every one I can think of, fall guys, rocket league, Fortnite etc were a success from day one.
Edit : hmm, maybe fallout 76, though that had a very dedicated fanbase because of the franchise
@get2sammyb yeah maybe I was a bit harsh saying I'm happy, nothing against the game in particular just the live service model as a whole. And when games like this fail it may become a deterrent for future devs with similar ideas unto which they then create great single player experiences instead.
I think the main problem with this kind of games is that they aren't good enough to be played all the time (just some reach that status like the two biggest mobas or two biggest battle royal) and the formula of battle passes is too much time consuming. I know they make money with them but there is a point where not even a person with a lot of time has time for all the battlepasses out there. I don't know what the solution is but I know two things.
1. I'm glad dota only has ONE battlepass per year.
2.- When I see a game has a battlepass that is asking me to play A LOT in 3 months that turns me off so bad.
After seeing another one bite the dust, I assume Sony are going all in on the live service with a lot of games planned as they know not all will succeed but hoping at least one does so it will pay for all the failures and then some.
I forgot this game had already launched, frankly. It's pretty damning that Epic published this and couldn't make it work.
this is excellent news , the more indie garbage trash that flops the better . tired of the fortnite bandwagon with these goofy looking kid games and zero production value .
single player games have so much more quality to them compared to these modern cash-grabbing multiplayer games it ain’t even fair .
@UltimateOtaku91 yo can you stop equating “live service” to “multiplayer” games ? thanks
not like you play multiplayer games anyway going by your typical pushsquare user bias , even though there’s mountains of high quality single player games and more being released like every month , but somehow y’all still complain about a genre that’s been struggling for years that you don’t even ***** play………………
Throw another one in the graveyard. The era of new live service games being sustainable is over. People are locked into the top five or so and that's it. Sony is going to get a wake up call once all there's start rolling out. You either have people that can only spread themselves so thin with the ones out or people just prefer sp games.
RIP Rumbleverse. I had intended to try this out at some point, but too late now lol.
This is why I prefer offline single player games instead usually.
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