One of the big calling cards of PAX Australia last year was Bethesda’s free-to-play BATTLECRY, the MOBA-esque third party action brawler. Bethesda promised it would have an exclusive beta for Australia and New Zealand, and the crowd was enthralled over the whole weekend.
But news about BATTLECRY has run thin and the game was absent from last weekend’s EB Expo, despite a decent showing for Fallout 4. One writer put the question to Bethesda: what’s going on with BATTLECRY?
That writer was Thomas Koch from Progress Bar, who received an answer I’d wager he wasn’t expecting.
“We have concerns about the BATTLECRY game and whether it is meeting the objectives we have for it,” Bethesda’s statement reads. “We are evaluating what improvements the game needs to meet our quality standards. The studio remains busy during this process on multiple projects.”
It’s a huge indictment against BATTLECRY, which Bethesda was hyping up quite a bit last year. They ran tournaments at QuakeCon and produced a little documentary series on the tournament, indicating that perhaps the developer and publisher were interested in forging a competitive scene that many iD titles — a studio which Bethesda owns — set benchmarks for.
But now, BATTLECRY looks deeply troubled. The complete absence of the Australia/New Zealand exclusive beta was a huge question mark and the frankness in Bethesda’s statement to Koch is nothing short of disturbing. It’s almost as if Bethesda are saying their own game isn’t fun. It’s certainly not ready — and if the publisher is openly questioning its progress, one has to wonder if there is a risk that the current developers, or the entire project, might even be canned.
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20 responses to “BATTLECRY Is Not Meeting Bethesda’s Quality Standards Right Now”
It is actually refreshing to hear a publisher say ‘I know we promised it, but we aren’t going to give you a garbage game’ instead of just pushing it out and hoping for the best *cough Arkham Knight cough*
Blizzard has a good track record of that as well. The main driving factor seems to be whether the developer self-publishes. Standalone publishers are responsible for a lot of unfinished games hitting market. In this case BattleCry Studios is basically Bethesda Softworks, just a piece broken off into a subsidiary specifically for this title.
Yeah not to mention also that Bethedsa also have 2 huge AAA titles that they are preparing for, so I don’t blame them for rushing 🙂
Don’t even talk to me about Blizzard not releasing games. WHERE IS MY LORD OF THE CLANS I HAVE BEEN WAITING 18 YEARS.
I’m pretty sure that one did get officially cancelled, as did Titan. I think Ghost is the only one we don’t have official word on yet.
Yeah WCA:LOTC was officially canned in like… ’98 or ’99. Apparently it was nearly finished though, there was a gameplay video uploaded maybe 4 or 5 years ago, so I’m still hoping they end up finishing an releasing it as a publicity stunt.
I’m fairly sure Ghost was officially cancelled last year at some point.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/23/6833953/blizzard-cancels-titan-next-gen-mmo-pc
Morhaime describes Ghost as canceled.
In the case of Blizzard, I’m not convinced they made the right moves on canning the huge-potential Ghost (I’ve watched all the videos and I would’ve played the hell out of that), or butchering/salvaging enough of Titan to come up with the very uninspiring Overwatch.
I’m looking forward to Overwatch actually, it looks pretty fun. We need more class-based team shooters than just TF2.
Or Evolve, or Dirty Bomb, or Brink, or Hawken, or Nosgoth, or Panzar, or Loadout, or exhibit g for yet another entry of evidence into a genre that needs new titles only to pound playerbase-stealing nails into the all the damn coffins littering the genre. I’m of the opinion that we needed a new F2P PVP ANYTHING from Blizzard about as much as a hole in the head.
For clarification, I’m not counting lopsided games. What I want is a standard class-based team shooter where the classes are the same on both sides for balance.
– Evolve: Lopsided team vs monster game, not really comparable.
– Dirty Bomb: Fits, but only came out a few months ago and everything I’ve heard about it is it’s crap.
– Brink: Barely scrapes in, only four classes.
– Hawken: Still in beta and basically dead going by Steam activity. I wanted that one to succeed too, we need more mech games.
– Nosgoth: Still in beta, third person, lopsided teams.
– Panzar: Third person, not sure I’d call it a shooter either personally.
– Loadout: Third person, not class-based.
Out of your list, only Dirty Bomb and Hawken really fit the style of game I’m interested in, one of them is dead and one is crap. That’s not exactly a lot of options.
Oh, go trawl through the F2P section on Steam alone and you’ll find plenty more qualifying titles. The only thing Blizzard brings to the table that isn’t already out there composting in the market is their signature polish (edit: and a legion of fans).
Shooter, MOBA, TCG… Main point is that all Blizzard’s latest stuff is creatively devoid bandwagon crap – take something popular (TF2, LOL, M:tG), make it more casual-friendly, make it shiny and polished, cannibalize the existing game’s success, tack on some lore developed from when they were making real games. F2P PVP FT(balance sheets)W.
It’s frustrating and disappointing (and lucrative) as hell.
To each their own. I quite like all of Blizzard’s current games, they do each of them better than the competition for my tastes.
Monday Night Combat…
I think that one’s locked to third person, isn’t it?
I completely agree. If Bethesda are saying their game isn’t good enough, then based off Bethesda’s track record of releasing great games, I’m happy for them to wait until they think it’s good enough.
Played it a lot at PAX Aus last year (Mostly for the free shirts), and it was pretty dull. Boring classes, boring maps, boring abilities, and spamming skills seemed to beat any application of skill.
I was recently trying to remember what the game was called.
Played it at PAX, thought it was alright. Felt like it needed more time – and I guess that is happening. Perhaps they’re scared of Overwatch? That looks far closer to release.
FWIW the seconds of footage they showed at the E3 conference looked very dull.