If any of this year’s upcoming releases launch the wayRedfalldid, they’ll be gone. Poof, kaput. Nobody will play them at launch, and then nobody will play them at all. There are simply too many games already being released this year,more than any human could reasonably play, for a game to have a bad launch and still have anybody want to play it after it’s been patched. We’ve seen this happen with Redfall already. After arocky release, mixed to negative reviews, and massive player backlash, Arkane has just released their first big patch, and nobody cares.
According to Steam Charts, there’s almost nobody playing Redfall. The number of concurrent players peaked yesterday at 101 players, a tragically low number. Compare that toStar Wars Jedi: Survivor, which launched mere days before and is still maintaining peaks numbering in the thousands, and it’s clear that regardless of how meaty this patch is, there’s nobody left to care about it. This was supposed to be one of Xbox’s biggest launches of the year, and it barely exists anymore, not even earning itself a mention at this week’s Xbox Games Showcase. We’ve all chosen to forget about it apart from bringing it up as a way to highlight Xbox’s recent failures.
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It would not be difficult for this to happen to any of the games slated for launch in the second half of this year. If something launches badly in a year that isn’t quite so packed, there’s still room for recovery – people might not forget your game altogether, and with enough time and work, they can recover and even become great games. But in a year like this, I can’t imagine the same thing will fly. There’s simply too much to play.
IfStarfieldis horribly broken on launch, I’m not going to wait around for them to patch it, I’m buyingMortal Kombat 1. IfAlan Wake 2is unplayable, I’m playingSpider-Man 2. If everything is broken, I’m going back to the first half of a year’s releases and catching up on everything I missed. I’m going to grind for hours inDiablo 4. I’ll finally startCyberpunk 2077and play the expansion, having missed it when it flubbed its own release. Hell, there are plenty of indies coming out that I’m desperate to get my hands on, and I’ll play those instead.
Launching a broken game in this year’s packed cycle is a surefire way to verify nobody plays it – even launching a mediocre game will be enough to make it disappear, since it’ll be overshadowed by so many highly-anticipated releases. At this point, a last-minute delay would make more sense than releasing in a broken state, since it would give developers a chance to fix whatever needs fixingandavoid the fierce competition that 2023’s releases are bringing. Would fans be pissed off? Probably, but not as pissed off as if a game releases with huge flaws. They’d forget how pissed off they were when it came out and worked perfectly a few months later. Launching a broken game in 2023 is a lose-lose situation for both developers and players – I’m hoping it doesn’t happen again.
