Yesterday, Sony introduced that the sport, which solely launched on August twenty third, could be shutting down on September sixth. Ryan Ellis, recreation director at developer Firewalk Studios, mentioned that it “didn’t land the way in which we’d supposed.” That appears to be an understatement: the sport goes offline, full refunds are being issued, and it’s unclear if Harmony will ever come again. Whereas the pace at which the sport ended could also be shocking, the truth that it occurred isn’t. Harmony is simply the newest sufferer of publishers chasing the live-service development with outsize expectations. Sadly, there’s solely a lot room — and Harmony was too generic to search out house.
It’s simple to see why so many studios and publishers need in. The longevity and profitability of video games like Fortnite and League of Legends are spectacular. They’re additionally practically unimaginable to copy. Harmony follows different high-profile failures like EA’s Anthem and Xbox’s Redfall. Each situations noticed beloved single-player studios — BioWare and Arkane Austin, respectively — pivot to persistent multiplayer video games with disastrous outcomes. (Every lasted longer than Harmony, however nonetheless had comparatively quick lives when it comes to updates.)
There are a couple of apparent errors particular to Harmony. It was a hero shooter, a style with entrenched competitors like Overwatch and Apex Legends, making it a tricky promote. Its attain was restricted to the PS5 and PC. Worse nonetheless, it was a full paid launch in an area the place free-to-play is the usual. However Harmony’s greatest drawback was that it was simply high-quality. With generic characters and irritating map design, there was nothing to make it stand out amongst a lot competitors. Within the live-service house, the place video games are designed to suck up as a lot of your time (and cash) as attainable, being a median recreation isn’t sufficient. There’s solely a lot of each to go round, and pulling gamers away from their current time sinks just isn’t a straightforward factor. If you’re up in opposition to Fortnite, you want a hook.
It’s changing into more and more clear that there’s no such factor as too huge to fail in terms of a live-service recreation, which signifies that quite a lot of the high-profile releases popping out quickly aren’t positive issues. That features the likes of Bungie’s Marathon, NetEase’s Marvel Rivals, and even Valve’s Impasse. (In case you suppose Valve is resistant to failure, would possibly I level you to the existence of Artifact.) They won’t shut down as shortly as Harmony, however it’s not inconceivable that any of them may fail to garner sufficient sustained consideration.
Within the publish saying the sport’s closure, Ellis mentioned that Harmony’s builders had been going to “discover choices, together with these that may higher attain our gamers.” More than likely, which means the sport would possibly seem once more sooner or later, with a free-to-play construction and possibly some gameplay tweaks. However addressing these core issues will probably be loads more durable than that. When each recreation needs your whole time, gamers want a very good cause to surrender their favorites. That’s what Harmony was lacking.