Shortly after, Robot Entertainment laid off 30 of its employees as it moved to refocus its work on a future project. Hero Academy 2 launched almost exactly one year ago. In an apologetic letter to players, CEO Patrick Hudson explains that the games simply cost more to run than they make back in return.
Free-to-play defend-o-shooter Orcs Must Die Unchained and both games in Robot Entertainment's turn-based Hero Academy series are set to close their doors this April.
Central Time, and that Robot Entertainment will give anyone logging into Orcs Must Die! Unchained and Hero Academy 2 between now and then a "substantial free grant of hard and soft currencies" to allow players to experience the games for their remaining durations. Unchained and Hero Academy shutting down April. The post goes on to say that the three games will cease operation on Monday, April 8 of this year at 10 a.m. We must shift our focus to future games and make our investments there." Unfortunately, it's no longer sustainable for us to do so. "We've kept these games operating at a financial loss for many months. With the discovery of dozens of new rifts and worlds beyond them, heroes have come from far and wide to wage all-out war for control of these magical gateways.
Orcs Must Die: The Boardgame includes scores of figures of favorite heroes, plus hordes of orcs, crossbow orcs. You have traps & weapons galore, and can team up with your friends to obliterate the nasty orcs and their grotesque allies. We know this decision affects our players as much as it does us. Orcs Must Die Unchained is set in the familiar world of its hilarious fantasy predecessors, years after the finale of Orcs Must Die 2. The award winning game Orcs Must Die has made its way to the table top Orcs Must Die: The Boardgame dares you to preserve your stronghold sieged by orcs. The communities who play our games join us on these journeys. "Along the way, there are plenty of highs and plenty of lows. "Making and supporting a game is a long and challenging journey," he wrote. In an official blog post, CEO Patrick Hudson explained that the three games were no longer financially viable for the company to keep running. But at the same time, I would expect Robot’s next game to run as a live service as well.Developer Robot Entertainment has announced today it will be ceasing operations for three of its games in the coming months: Orcs Must Die! Unchained, Hero Academy, and Hero Academy 2. This is a reminder that running a game-as-a-service is not a magic bullet to success - and that these games are especially transient. It was actually removed from the App Store in early 2018.” “We could not maintain the pace of operating system updates from Apple.
“The original Hero Academy has been technically obsolete for a long time now,” said Hudson. Those updates introduce specialized costs that don’t include maintaining a server and content updates.
Every time Apple updates iOS, developers have to update their games to ensure they run on the latest hardware.
I was given the opportunity to take the existing. Hero Academy, meanwhile, suffered from trying to run a long-term service on a constantly changing platform like a mobile operating system. I worked as the UI lead for the Dashboard portion of Orcs Must Die Unchained. Put simply: If you don’t have enough people, they won’t spend enough money, and the games can’t pay for themselves let alone generate a profit. “Orcs Must Die: Unchained and Hero Academy 2 have been unable to maintain a sufficient player base to cover the operational costs to keep the games running,” Hudson wrote. In a message on its website, Robot explains that these games have been. As a service, developers hope to maintain games for long periods of time in an effort to attract players (and spending) that stick around for months or even years.īut live-service games all face challenges, and Robot Entertainment’s trio of closures illustrate those difficulties.įor Orcs Must Die: Unchained and Hero Academy 2, the issue came down to popularity. Both Orcs Must Die Unchained and Hero Academy 2 will be shut down on April 8, 2019. Many are now services, and that includes the three games that Robot is shutting down. Games were once products, but that isn’t the case anymore. It wants to ensure that anyone still showing up to play these games have a delightful experience before they potentially go away forever. It did, however, promise to award Unchained and Hero Academy players with bonus in-game currency. Robot did announce that it is working on two new games that it hopes to reveal in 2019. Three top investment pros open up about what it takes to get your video game funded.