![]() The economics for newer free-to-play games were becoming unsustainable. ![]() We saw that around the US economy and a few others." In some places, savings rates had been higher during pandemic and so people were eating into their savings rather than contracting spending, even though inflation was dropping income. "We also saw currency deflation affect our Western European audience as well. Your metrics for retention needed to be much higher to break even because both that and monetisation were moving in a negative direction. Inflation and currency devaluation was really crimping on discretionary spend and affecting all games that were free-to-play at the time. "We found that inflation was hitting really hard around the world, especially in East Asia where free-to-play really rules. "My hope is we can come back with a Knockout City in the future. But when Velan investigated further and spoke to other companies in similar positions, it realised there was a much bigger factor. This, Bala notes, did not match with the seasonal variations his team expected – for example, the return to school reducing the amount of time and money spent by young players. While the free-to-play Knockout City received a good inflow of users after the transition, the developer experienced a dramatic drop-off in both retention and monetisation around the end of August. The macro phenomenon he refers to first became apparent around September last year. Some of it was macro and actually can be generalized to all the different games that are shutting down right now." "When we released the free-to-play version, we had a couple different challenges. "We'd made an early commitment also to make it cosmetics-only microtransactions, not going the loot box route or other kinds of routes – and certainly no pay-to-win because it's not the healthy essence of a competitive game," Bala says. The business model changed, but the developer was still determined to avoid some of the more divisive strategies used to survive in the free-to-play space. It sold fairly well but not well enough to as a mid-price premium title to continue to support an additional flow of content."Īs a result, Knockout City also went free-to-play one year after launch, with Velan dropping EA as publisher and handling the game independently. Most of those had converted to free-to-play titles, so the competitive environment changed for pricing. ![]() ![]() "But by the time we had launched, mid-price premium was pretty uncommon for multiplayer-only titles. "We were really thrilled with the initial userbase as well as the audience reception," he says. caught up with Guha Bala, co-founder of Knockout City's developer Velan Studios as well as long-running studio Vicarious Visions, to find out more about the reasons for this once-promising game's demise.įirst, Bala emphasises that Knockout City got off to a strong start when it was published as a mid-priced premium title by Electronic Arts, with an additional boost thanks to its inclusion on Xbox Game Pass. The multiplayer game, which pits teams of players against each other in a fantastical version of dodgeball, is due to shut down on June 6 – roughly two years after it first debuted. Knockout City was one of many casualties in the wave of online games that are scheduled for closure this year. Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox
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