It’s not easy for a developer to keep up with the constant demand for live games, let alone developers used to larger projects with longer timelines. As major studios and AAA games continue to experiment with ongoing models that work for games like Destiny 2 and Fortnite, the heavy toll that constant updates can impose on a studio is becoming increasingly apparent. But some developers are opting out of the update cycle in favor of big expansions and clearer end dates.
Thursday, Back 4 Blood developer Turtle Rock Studios announced that it no longer plans to develop new content for the game. Instead, the studio is moving on to a new project, while leaving open the possibility of returning to its cooperative survival shooter in the future – or at least returning to the series. While Turtle Rock’s plans are vague at the moment, they show that the studios have options when it comes to making multiplayer games, and they don’t have to be antithetical to start new projects.
Back 4 Blood was originally released in October 2021 and has had three expansions since, with its last release in December 2022. Players who paid for the game received over a year of post-release support, including free patches and paid expansions that added major content to the game. Ten years ago this would have been the standard lifecycle of a multiplayer game, but it’s almost an anomaly now.
Image: Turtle Rock Studios/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
As tempting as it may be for developers to pursue the dream of an eternally updatable, sustainable game that generates revenue month after month, most projects designed around this idea end up collapsing under their own weight. Developers are either unable to release enough content to sustain a player base over the months and years needed to recoup costs, or the games just aren’t good enough to attract players in the first place. The last decade of gaming is littered with titles like Marvel’s Avengers or Anthem which promised players endless updates and has since been shut down – just this week, Rumbleverse, Apex Legends Mobileand Knockout City suffered the same fate.
But an extension model like Turtle Rock’s Back 4 Blood The plan could give more traditional studios the ability to build multiplayer games, support them with new content for a while, and gracefully pause them.
Expansions have fallen into disuse over the past 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 on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. But maintaining a game like this requires a massive studio, which means a game has to be a smash hit – often from the get-go – to have any chance of surviving.
Back 4 Blood never needed to set the world on fire or make a billion dollars, and Turtle Rock didn’t need to dramatically increase its staff to make it work. Instead, the studio can stay lean and move on to its next project, while ensuring gamers have content for the game they’ve loved — at least for a little while.
