![]() You'll be able to play solo offline matches to progress through the campaign sometime next month - but note that means you won't be able to split-screen co-op, just play solo offline. ![]() This November, expect quality of life improvements and major bug fixes, while December will bring one of the most highly requested features since Back 4 Blood's launch: offline mode. Instead, the studio can keep itself lean and move on to its next project, all while making sure players got content for the game they loved - at least for a little while.The official Back 4 Blood Twitter account shared the road map, which goes from November 2021 and extends into 2022. But keeping a game like that going requires a massive studio, and that means a game needs to be wildly successful - often right out of the gate - to have a chance of surviving.īack 4 Blood never needed to set the world on fire or make a billion dollars, and Turtle Rock didn’t need to vastly increase its staff to keep it running. The last decade of games is littered with titles like Marvel’s Avengers or Anthem that promised players endless updates and have since been shut down - just this week, Rumbleverse, Apex Legends Mobile, and Knockout City suffered the same fate.īut an expansion model like Turtle Rock’s Back 4 Blood plan could provide more traditional studios with the option to make multiplayer games, support them with new content for a while, and still sunset them gracefully.Įxpansions have fallen out of vogue over the last decade due in large part to the success of massive games like League of Legends and Fortnite, which are free-to-play and offer free content updates to their players every week or two. Developers are either unable to release enough content to sustain a player base over the months and years it takes to recoup costs, or the games are simply not good enough to attract players in the first place. Interactive EntertainmentĪs tempting as it may be for developers to chase the dream of an eternally updatable and sustainable game that generates revenue month after month, most projects designed around that idea end up folding under their own weight. A decade ago, this would have been the standard life cycle of a multiplayer game, but it’s almost an anomaly now. Players who paid for the game got more than a year of post-release support, including free patches and paid expansions that added major content to the game. While Turtle Rock’s plans are vague at the moment, they show that studios have options when it comes to making multiplayer games, and that they don’t have to be antithetical to starting new projects.īack 4 Blood was originally released in October 2021 and has had three expansions since, with its latest coming out in December 2022. Instead, the studio is moving to a new project, while leaving open the possibility of returning to its co-op survival shooter in the future - or at least, returning to the series. On Thursday, Back 4 Blood developer Turtle Rock Studios announced that it’s no longer planning to develop new content for the game. ![]() ![]() But some developers are opting out of the update cycle in favor of big expansions and clearer end dates. As big studios and AAA games continue to experiment with the ongoing models that work for games like Destiny 2 and Fortnite, the massive toll that constant updates can take on a studio become more and more apparent. It’s not easy for any developer to keep up with the constant demand of live-service games, let alone developers accustomed to bigger projects with longer deadlines.
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