GamesSportsKnockout City’Make a private hosted version of your game': Knockout City dev’s top tip for studios shutting down a live service game is to give players the keysWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesSportsKnockout City’Make a private hosted version of your game': Knockout City dev’s top tip for studios shutting down a live service game is to give players the keysWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Velan Studios)
Harrison was in charge of marketing for competitive dodgeball game Knockout City. We loved the game, which we awarded a 90% inour review, but even after going free-to-play, it struggled to retain players. Velan Studiosshut down Knockout City’s serverstwo years after it launched.
There’s one thing, however, that Harrison recommends studios do above all others when sunsetting a live service game: let players keep playing the game on their own servers. Before shutting down Knockout City, Velan released the game as a standalone Windows executable with private server support. It’s stillavailable to download.
Harrison acknowledged that the feasibility of releasing a standalone client will vary between games and studio circumstances. Velan Studios itself wasn’t on the verge of shuttering despite Knockout City’s struggles, so it had the funds to briefly dedicate a team of developers to the problem. It helped that the task was fairly straightforward: development builds of Knockout City operated “very similarly to how a private server build would,” said Harrison, making the project “a relatively light lift.”
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“If you take one thing away from this talk, this is it: Make a private hosted version of your game,” said Harrison. “It is the single biggest thing that we did to impact the positive reception of the sunset. It got great press, got great reactions from players, and ultimately, it keeps the game that everybody at the studio worked so hard on alive forever, even with the live servers offline.
“In our case, we were only able to do it for PC players for a few different reasons but it still did the job that we wanted it to, and due to some extremely light analytics hooks in it, we still see people playing it every day even nine months later.”
That the best way to soften the blow of shutting down a game is to let people keep playing the game isn’t the most astounding observation ever, but I found it heartening that it was Harrison’s top recommendation in what could’ve instead been a talk about the best ways to save face without actually preserving the game. Most don’t get that treatment—typically when a live service game ends, it becomes impossible to play.
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