It should not be a big surprise to anyone that Archeage in NA and EU is finally shutting down. This game, which has been passed from Trion Worlds who handled the initial launch, to Gamigo who acquired it when Trion went out of business, to Kakao Games who got it back when the publishing contract was finished as they are the majority owners of XL games is finally shuttering on 27June 2024.
In the last decade, Archeage was probably the best open world PVP game that has been released on the market. Sadly, while the core organic gameplay loop of the game is amazing, Archeage represents what happens when you build in problems with the gameplay loop so you can sell the solution in the form of Pay-to-win. It also represents the issue with a game that is horribly mismanaged not once, not twice, but three times by publishers who don’t understand that a subscription based game that is properly cared for has the potential to earn more money than a box price game that is littered with flaws.
With Archeage coming to a close, what does this mean for Archeage 2? It worries me as a company that Kakao doesn’t have the financial holdings to support a game with I believe 1 server per region now that they have merged legacy with the Unchained servers, something they said they would never do.
Coupled with this is the fact that 70% of game developers are worried about the live service model. Maybe game developers are worried they can’t sustain a population because they keep making terrible games. Let’s not even talk about Mike Ybarra who thinks tipping on top of a box price is a good idea.
What do you think?