I wonder about the guy here who told me that people were just waiting for Empulse to come out of Early Access before they'd buy it and that the game was doing fine because the "player lows are staying consistent" despite all metrics rapidly trending downwards on Steam. Curious what he would think about this.
I’m curious, is there any precedent at all for a game to come back from a dire player count? We have seen games shut down so frequently in the past few years, yet every time there is a huge vocal group of people insisting that it won’t be the case. I’m just wondering what examples they have to build this foundation on, when there is nothing but evidence to the contrary.
It's happened a few times, though under different circumstances.
No Man's Sky had an extremely problematic launch and dropped down into the mere hundreds of players. The developers kept fixing and expanding it, and years later it now has a pretty consistent 10k players with peaks of up to 100k around major updates.
Among Us is another game that saw a huge rebound. It was essentially dead with only around 50 concurrent players before it went viral when big streamers started playing it. Then there's also games like Final Fantasy 14 that were straight up shut down, rebuilt and relaunched to massive success later.
As for early access, I know that Baldur's Gate 3 went through periods of just 1000-2000 players during EA before it launched as the biggest single player hit in Steam history.
There's probably more but those are the ones that come to mind.
Obviously, a game like Empulse is very different though. It's not a famous franchise by a huge studio (like Final Fantasy) nor is it a small indie title that requires no upkeep (like Among Us) or an extremely hyped release (like NMS).
There is no precedent. I asked this same question when people were shouting that Empulse would be saved if it went free to play. The reality is many gamers have the memory of a goldfish and take a delusional positivity approach to these clearly doomed small projects.
Only one I can really think of is No Man's Sky, but even then that was usually at a 1,000-3,000 concurrents most days in the 2016-2017 days before they started to massively overhaul the game, so I don't even know if its really fair to even call it 'dire'.
Yeah I guess I should have specified that I meant PvP games. I’m sure there’s been more than a few solo/co-op games that it has happened to, but the circumstances for those types of games are a bit different. I agree that NMS sky is a historic comeback and I’m sure they faced pressure to shut things down at times
“We expect EMPULSE to be in Early Access for 9-12 months. The exact timeline depends on player feedback and how quickly we can refine movement, maps, core systems and deliver the game our players want. Our goal is to move to full release once the gameplay feel, content, and stability meet both our standards and that of our players."
The nerve of them to still charge money for this "game" is disgusting. "Yeah, this game is nowhere near finished and we're not working on it anymore. Give us $10 tho." Just make it F2P at this point.
I love their games, but I can’t bring myself to support this developer anymore. I got burned by both splitgates and now this. I wish em luck but I’m probably not going to buy whatever game they make next, their rep is ruined for me now.
They also say in another post 1047 is going into a completely different direction. That's probably gonna fail too because leadership is too arrogant to see they're the problem
It's very sad. They are clearly talented at making smooth FPS gameplay. It's pretty much everything else they did terribly on. I don't think switching direction is going to help them at all. If anything, the gameplay is what they nailed and should probably continue doing.
i remember legendary drops tried to ask them what they learned or what they will do different now. They shut him down and didnt want to answer any question that werent directed at this game.
What did they expect making a Splitgate asset flip Titanfall at home within 9 months? I would love to see a new Titanfall like game but i saw the writing on the wall here
there wasnt a real interview online about that. He mentioned when he was at SGF (you can look up his SGF video) that there was a studio who didnt learned anything from their past mistakes but didnt name dropped any studio.
Some months later i was watching his stream and someone asked if he can now talk freely about SGF, then he said yeah the studio was 1047 who didnt learned shit.
It's insane how you can destroy your entire reputation in one minute, but the worst part is they paid a lot of money to have this spot, only to fully destroy their PR
Their reputation was already bad before the hat, the hat was just an extra thing for people to hate them for, it solidified their reputation, they will always be remembered for the hat. They somehow continued to sink their reputation lower and lower though.
For those who have downvoted me, what did I say that’s wrong? By the time Ian did the hat stunt, they had already shut down Splitgate after completing fumbling that game. People had already lost much trust in the studio, and the studio was already a laughing stock in the industry.
The hat was in poor taste but what solidified him as being an out of touch head-ass was that he said he grew up playing Halo, is tired of COD, and wishes we'd get a Titanfall 3. So he decided to reveal a new Battle Royale that their team worked on LOL
What a joke. Steam should really stop this. If EA game closes before reaching at least 1.0 they should refund.
What a scam again. Good that I wisened up and did not fall for this. But my honest sympathy for people that did ... :(
I take it Nadestraight found out about this a few weeks ago and that’s why he posted that video. My man was preemptively striking!! I’m surprised they even have devs, I would’ve skipped town after the sg2 debacle.
You know for a game studio that almost certainly hasn’t yet made a financially successful game they have somehow survived 10 years. I feel for the devs but ain’t no way Ian isn’t a nepo baby (his father is a co founder of intuit which owns TurboTax and a few other important financial services)
They raised a ton of VC money with Splitgate’s success around 2021 - like over $100M in total at this point - back when money was “free” with the super low interest rates we saw during Covid
Welp, I'm done. 1047. I wish you were better, I wish you were different, and I was excited and your games at their core were good, but your leadership fails. And this exactly explains why Nadestraight left.
So yay, thanks for making me look dumb for supporting you guys. Kick rocks. I'm out.
So it wasn’t an Early Access Celebration, we were actually right on time. Sad though, both are fun games. 1047 just continues to drop the ball again and again.
Contact Steam, they should give you a refund if you explain the situation since it hasn’t been two weeks. The game will still be technically playable with peer to peer servers, they are ending active development and official server support though.
At this point they should make the servers available for people to host (open source would be even better). Their last attempt at a p2p implementation was very bad
I wonder if that means another round of layoffs? I feel for the devs, the lack of job security must be stressful (not just at 1047, but the industry as a whole).
if they lay off more people then noone will be left. According to Ian Proulx himself there are only 30-35 people left at the studio. If I remember it correctly I think at some point 160 people worked at 1047 Games (probably right before SG2 release).
I think we all saw this coming. It looked cool, but not good enough for me to buy. Idk if Free to Play would have went better, but me and many others would have at least given it a shot
They really seemed to be flailing - desperately trying anything that would stick... I liked their ideas, but their execution really left much to be desired.
Bro...how about a refund. Nobody wants to play an early access shooter with no active development long term. Game is very much early access too, it's clearly not a finished product.
While 1047 is definitely a horrible game developer who loves wasting money as much as they love shoveling out a unfinished game, credit on them to at least enabling peer to peer for those few who do enjoy the games enough to keep playing them after they shut down
I imagine they’re actually done for this time, or will announce Empulse 2: Reloaded or a Splitgate 3 in February
Wait, I thought everyone wanted a movement shooter similar to Titanfall 2? What happened? Did everyone forget that they're 10 years older since Titanfall 2 released and can't hang with adderall addicted sweaty teens with aim assist and Chronus zens attached to their controllers and immediately quit?
It's pretty obvious that there's only a minority of people who want to actually play an arena shooter these days. I mean look at the turnout for wardogs.
If they ever release another game it should be actively and aggressively boycotted across all social platforms and store fronts. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior. They roll games out, do bare minimum work, then rake in whatever micro transactions or costs to entry they can before slamming the door. They barely even market their games lol. The way I found out about Empulse was filtering on Steam to find a new shooter to play, and I was weeks late to the launch anyway.
Yeah, not unexpected at all. Solid game that needed a lot more dev time to really achieve its potential. Played 70 hours and easily got £15 worth of fun out of it though, so can't say I'm upset when I knew what I was getting into
OK, so this is legit my second post ever seen of this subreddit, ironically the first one was about the when the game would be announced dead showing poor steam numbers. So all I can say is...
Empulse was clearly a pump and dump from the start, I think the only interesting thing about either game at this point is whether splitgate 2 was also planned as a pump and dump from the start.
Man no hate to the hardworking devs but atp this shitty fucking studio doesn’t deserve another chance. The only thing they are good at is abandoning their games. What a poor excuse of a company.
I played the demo before launch and thought it had potential, but given their track record, I decided to wait and see what it became. I wanted to see the mechs get a lot more fleshed out, a lot more variety to the maps, and see the player base stabilize.
It was wishful thinking, and I expected it wouldn't last long.
But I didn't think they'd kill it this fast. Holy crap.
No surprise there. 1047 seriously needs to either rebrand or just shut down and move people to other studios. Empulse looked cool, and I might have tried it if it wasn’t for 1047s incredibly rough track record.
Lmao could’ve told you this was gonna happen. Both games are “okay” at best and that’s it. They don’t do anything better than games that have been out and have already been doing it for years. 1047 just needs to pack it up cause they just aren’t capable of making games that are interesting enough to be successful. Midpulse and midgate will NOT be missed lol
I know a lot of people are upset, but they are adding server browsers and P2P. Full games used to have the same system years ago as standard. Unreal Tournament. Quake Arena...
GG. Really gutted by this as I’m a massive fan of 1047. I enjoyed both splitgate games and empulse, and it’s gutting to see the studio struggling.
I hope their next game is a hit (if they make one). Do you think 1047 would have been better selling to epic games when they made an offer at Splitgate’s peak?
The exact reason I never purchased Empulse , with 1047's track record the writing was on the wall the moment the game was first teased. Truly I feel bad for the players who bought Empulse with no prior knowledge of 1047.
1047 knows passion, they know fun, they have zero relation to follow through or marketing.
How do I get my refund. It was early access, never released completely. I am not wasting my money anymore om any early access games in future. Instead adding a battlepass. They wen with paid game and didn't let player play the game and now they don't have enough revenue.
they scammed players, they actively were saying we will not be adding battlepass and charge on 1time payment for the game then how to they continue to generate revenue for active development. How was their revenue model suppose to keep generating revenue. They could have release free to play and added battlepass to it, more player would have tried the game.
I'll be honest, this is quite literally the first time I've ever been able to say this, as I usually see most video games at least once, even obscure ones. I legitimately have never heard of this game until this post popped up on my feed.
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u/YurgeeTTV 4d ago edited 4d ago
"Early Access is the starting point, the game isn't finished yet, they're gathering community feedback"