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APB To Close Mere Months After Launch
APB, the action MMO created by Realtime Worlds and launched at the end of June, will soon be closing its doors. The game was very expensive to make, and news of the studio's financial difficulties has been circulating in the wake of disappointing sales numbers and reviews. Today, less than three months after the servers went live, community officer Ben Bateman announced that service will be discontinued shortly. One of the developers said, "In every way APB was a dichotomy. I have witnessed the project alter from a fragile and delicate entity used to show the world the depth of our vision through to the sturdy beast we released to the public. There were the unusual errors and crashes which are to be expected, but it worked. Once in the hands of our community I have never seen something elicit such a polarization of people. It was dismissed as overhyped and broken or else taken to heart to be loved and cherished, buoyed on by a fanaticism I was proud to have played a part in bringing to the world."
I loved the game, but cheating was rampant from day 1. After a couple weeks, I couldn't tolerate it anymore, as it literally seemed that you HAD to cheat to complete your missions.
It was fun otherwise, and was looking forward to coming back to it in a year ( after they got the cheating under control ).
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Hellgate London (with Founders), Tabula Rasa and now APB ...
The next time I purchase an MMO I'll let you guys know ahead of time so you know that it will fail.
I am so surprised they didn't make any money, mostly because I have never heard of "APB"... was their entire marketing plan built around word of mouth advertising?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
130,000 players, spending $28/month, that's about $48M/year gross revenues. If nobody could figure out how to buy that asset out of bankruptcy, spend a couple mil a year on servers and bandwidth, pay a few people to administer it and create ongoing content and turn a profit, that's baffling to me. There must be more to the story than that, like they simply were unhappy with the bids they were getting because they were valuing it based on crazy metrics, or the amount they spent to develop it in the first place. Weird.
And this is why making an MMO is just as risky as making an online shooter: The value of your game to other players is proportional to how many people play it. If you don't build a large player base quickly, the game will have no staying power, and will be abandoned quickly: It's boom or bust. Realtime just didn't make that great a game, so they went bust.
A pity: They went ahead and built a game nobody played, while the Crackdown franchise was handed to a team that built a sequel that was worse than the original in almost every way. I'd have much rather have a quality Crackdown 2 than the two games we ended up with.
(sidles over to the article)
TFA doesn't say WTF APB means either. Apollonius Christ. ROTF man I hate abbreviations (IMHO). LOL ;-)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
From the website:
Realtime Worlds Points are a virtual currency that you can buy, right here, for cash. You can spend these RTW Points on lots of cool stuff, including gametime. It costs 280 Points for a 20 hour chunk (which never expires), and just 400 Points gets you unlimited access for 30 days.
Guess that "never expires" part isn't entirely accurate now. Or, if it is, not useful.
Just for giggles I clicked on "Purchase 400 Points" and got a server error...
Adios APB!
I think you mean $5,000,000 per year, which is much less than the $48 million a year some have suggested they were pulling in.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
A nice chunk of change for an individual ... but there are multiple costs that have to be addressed (servers, development, PR, marketing, etc...), salaries to be paid (code monkeys still get a paycheck, CEO's demand high wages), and probably investors that are demanding a return.
To be honest, $3.64M per month just doesn't seem like enough.
(Oh, and taxes, let's not forget those)
Yet another reason they should give the client software away for free and just charge monthly fees for access to the servers. Of course, if you're foolish enough to spend real world cash to purchase virtual property, you deserve whatever you get when they shut the servers down -- no online world is going to last forever!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Presumably if they had money to provide refunds they wouldn't be shutting their doors.
If you bought it recently (like the last week or so) you should probably be able to return it to a retailer, if you bought it in early august or back in july, well, some games are short 8-20 hour affairs even at full price. This happens to be one of them.
registered users don't necessarily mean 'paying users'. A common industry trick I'm afraid. We're registered users on /., but we don't pay them after all.
The other thing is even if they were all paying users. Say you're 25 or 30 million bucks in debt for having made the game, set up servers, marketting etc. (maybe more maybe less but it's a good number for an MMO), at say 130k copies they made maybe 3 million back, because retailers etc. take a lot of your costs. Even if they made 6 million they're still very deep in the hole. Now, as you say, if they're all paying a monthly fee they should be able to eventually recover. That however, is not usually how it works. Of those lets presume 130k people who bought the game, what percent are sticking around? If they're leaving in droves and you've only got 20 or 30k actual paying customers you have a very serious problem, and no one is going to think you're able to pay your bills at that rate.
The difference being that software, games, music, TV shows, and movies can continue working as long as you have the media (and a suitable device for using them.) With an MMO, once the servers are shut down the software and everything you paid for in the game are worthless.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
With the exception of DRM-protected software, music, and video that is required to phone home to a server to authorize playback, yes. As an engineer, I've run plenty of applications wherein the largest source of failure was the license server being unavailable. Again, either make me pay for it up front and allow me to do anything I want with it, or give it to me for free and charge me periodic fees for access to the servers required to make it work, but don't make me both pay for it up front AND to make it keep working.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Even so, virtually all DRM schemes can be cracked. I mean, you can crack Steam games as far as that goes. The problem with MMOs is that being able to function at all depends entirely on the presence of those remote servers. All the cracking in the world doesn't do a damn bit of good unless someone has figured out how to setup an unauthorized server.
If I did have some kind of licensed media to which the authorizing server eventually went down, you better believe I'd head over to TPB or Demonoid to download an unencrypted copy. Alas, there is not a comparable solution for MMOs.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
The developer's quote sounds like they were on a humanitarian mission to cure cancer or bring world peace. It was a game that failed. Games are expensive to produce. Movin' on...
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Alright, so does anyone have a copy of the APB server software in their back pocket?
I know that there are private WoWarcraft servers up and running, albeit illegally.
At least they can't blame this one on piracy.
apb was hyped to be gta online. what we got was not a gta world it was not a open world only time you ever saw another player was when you did this missions or in the social area but never just walking/driving around the map. going pay to play in this market was also a frigging bad idea. so there was no committing random crimes no world of gangs messing with your day. pretty much everything they hyped this game to be was a lie.
if it is any good like you say, it will even prosper and become prominent.
Read radical news here
pay mmos in genrel are struggling. maybe have gone free or shutdown. wow is the only mmo that has really ran in the long term. and well nobody knows why that game exploded like that not even blizzard people just do not blow money on something like a mmo these days. even star trek online is thinking of switching to a free model and they haven't been around long either.
It exploded for the same reason that the iPhone did, it was the best polished MMO created by a developer with a large fanbase released just as everyone was getting broadband. What both Blizzard and Apple did right was appeal to the casual segments where everyone else was trying to attract the hardcore and lodged in their leading positions they get momentum by pure marketshare.
I don't know about all this so-called marketing. The first time I heard of APB was at PAX East back in February. They had 8 stations set up logged into the game. They had one emotionless, utterly uninterested guy talking about how awesome the game was, who occasionally threw a T-shirt into the huge crowd amassing around their booth. He would then taunt everyone else by saying "the best way to get a shirt is to play the game".
Except NO ONE GOT TO PLAY. Well, a couple of people did. They'd get about 5 minutes on the station, which was enough to walk around a little, and... find nobody else. Then, when they got off, the stations would be taken over by booth staffers, who would dick around with the stations for 15 minutes or so.
The best way to get people to play your game is to LET THEM PLAY IT. When a crowd of people are surrounding your booth, interested in playing a game that has no legacy to spur familiarity or loyalty, you should make sure they get to play it. Especially if it's as awesome as you say (hearing the music being played by people driving past, etc.). And you should provide a decent playzone or sandbox where they can actually do useful things instead of ooh and aah at your now-industry-standard graphics.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Sounds like greed and poor decision making has been rampant at Realtime since it started, with Crackdown they wanted a multi-game deal before the original ever shipped, then when MS was ready to deal on Crackdown 2 (2 months after launch) they passed and made it sound to the press like it was MS's fault for taking a wait and see approach saying MS was taking to long. When MS handed Crackdown 2 to Ruffian, Realtime expressed their unhappiness with MS not waiting until APB was done. Between the charging full price for a game that had no demo or trial, a monthly fee with additional in game purchases basically required to even be competitive and buggy as hell final product did anyone really think this game had a chance?
Does the ticket contain the concert? No, it lets you in the door. When you go to a concert, what media actually holds the concert - where's the container? Keys are not the car. I'm with mh1997.
But that post was in a reply to a post mentioning all music. Why isn't live music performance included under "all music"? That's a very limited definition of music.
Going further up the thread, it was initiated by somebody saying it was "foolish" to buy virtual property. So, by this logic, someone must be a fool to buy a ticket to a concert rather than a recording of the concert? Someone must be a fool to buy a copyright to a valuable recording? To rent a house? To pay for internet access?
I'm sorry, the notion that only physical items are worthy of purchase is ridiculous.
... and then they built the supercollider.
APB was a great game. I don't regret one minute of gametime. There was something special about this one and I'm really sad to see it go.
APB has really changed the way I look at gaming and gamers now.
I will have many fond memories.
I wrote this post for another website:
I'm a Threat 15 (highest threat-Win:Loss Ratio) Enforcer on LaRocha
I'm sad about its demise. I believe it was one of the best games to come out in a long time. I really believe a lot of people who would have liked the game didn't give it a time of day because of bad reviews.
I used to put a lot of faith in reviews. After putting in a lot of time actually playing the game, I'm convinced a lot of reviewers barely gave it enough time to understand the game, let alone play it. I have completely reevaluated my stance on taking a lot of reviewers word for it. I saw their lazy writing in this one.
The game did have problems. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't perfect. But the things that bother me the most is that so much misinformation gets floated about the game that is just plain dead wrong.
A lot of people I don't think understand the process of putting a game like this together. I saw the genius in it.
Strengths:
* 2 maps. How can two maps be a strength? When you realize it is more like 1000 maps put into a single contained world. So by my definition, APB had 2000 maps over two worlds. This led to a randomness in the game. You'd have to drive in between "maps" with a thousand things going on in between you and your objective. This led to a wonderful randomness that sometimes worked for you and other times worked against you.
* Improvisational gameplay. Items could end up in areas specifically not designed for a battle. You had to on the fly make decisions on where to be to be most advantageous.
* Shooting was less important in this game. I'd say 70 percent of the game was shooting, 30 percent was driving. Driving ability was really important. So if you aren't the best Counterstrike aimer in the world, you'd have value if you could keep your sports car on the road. Good driving was a skill in this game.
* Knowledge was power. People complained about upgrades being too powerful. As someone who also started a new character frequently, I didn't have a problem with upgraded people. Why? Because I knew the ins and outs of the game better. So when a newbie gets decimated he blames the powerful gun his opponent used. But I know that if they changed equipment, the player with more knowledge would win despite the upgrades.
Weaknesses:
* Matchmaking. The number one thing that killed this game was matchmaking. It put to much power in the hands of the players. Players could decide on what missions to take. Experienced players would take the missions they knew would be easy. New players would take anything and eventually get matched up with experienced players. So what ended up happening is you had a public group going against a clan. So you had the equivalent of IDRA going up against bronze players. You had Fatality going up against new Quakelive players. You put the best tactical Counterstrike clan into a public de_dust2 server. New player dies. New player dies. New player dies. New Player dies. This game is shit and quits. 90 percent of the people who played this game ran into this. Upgraded guns just fueled the fire in the new players head. This game could not be played solo. If you went solo, the game would be a lot slower. A lot more boring. And sounds a lot like a lot of the reviews I read about the game. Basically if you jumped into a TF2 server, played one on one for 5 hours then decided, oh I'll join a public server with a group and end up going against the number one TF2 team, would your opinion about the game change?
* Cheating got completely out of hand. Those hardcore players who c