Comment on 2XKO Active Development Will End in December 2026
pory@lemmy.world 2 days agoThis one was f2p, so it doesn’t matter how many copies it “sold”. It needed dedicated long term players that would shell out for hats.
The casual fighting games market does exist, but it’s going to be people that buy the fighting game for an IP they like (say, Dragon Ball Z) and play it for a couple months then put it on the shelf. Maybe they boot it back up (and pay $10 again) when the DLC adds Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta or whatever.
2XKO was never a game that could make money from casuals, because there was no reason for anyone except “fgc mechanics heads” to give a single shit about the game. And those fgc heads saw a 2v2 tag fighter with ten characters and responded with a resounding “lmao”. Doesn’t help that it’s a fighting game with kernel anticheat.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
A game like DBFZ can reach more than 10 million players even with a price barrier, so I can so the rationale for free to play. Personally, I think free to play is a horrible gamble for just about any game these days, regardless of genre, but only 10 characters and an enormous grind to unlock more, I would agree, was a death sentence for this game. Even if they launched with 20 characters, they were never going to get new ones out in this genre with a cadence that resembled League of Legends. And yeah, while the mechanics borrow heavily from some of my least favorite fighting games, they also told me to straight up not bother with it by way of anti-cheat.
pory@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Well that’s what I mean tho. If DBFZ reaches a million players in year 1, Bamco gets sixty million dollars (pre taxes and fees and licensing yadda yadda). If 2XKO reaches a million players, Riot gets zero dollars unless you also got some of that million to buy hats. A guy who buys DBFZ and plays for a week before dropping it got you sixty bucks. Same dude in 2XKO that doesn’t buy a $20 hat gets you zilch.