Akash

WHEN UBISOFT ANNOUNCED that Hyper Scape, its ambitious battle royale game, would be shutting down on April 28, news articles were blunt. “Forgotten,” “failure,” and “massive flop” were common descriptors, and the general conclusion was that the game hadn’t done enough to differentiate itself from established competitors in a crowded genre. Hyper Scape is just the latest live service game to meet an ignominious end. Battleborn, LawBreakers, Crucible, and PlanetSide Arena are a few notable titles to go under in the last few years, the latter surviving a mere four months. And once the servers for these games go down, they’re gone forever. Maybe this is the natural result of an overcrowded marketplace intent on chasing trends. But how do developers feel about working for years on games that fail and vanish for reasons beyond their control? And how do they feel about continuing to work in a medium where, as more games turn to the live service model, their creative efforts become increasingly precarious?