Today, publisher Square Enix and developer Platinum Games finally did what everyone predicted from the start: they announced Babylon’s fall will be closed within the first year. While I’m hardly surprised, it still sucks. People paid $60 for this game only six months ago and in less than six months it won’t work anyway earlier promises to the contrary.
Babylon’s falla frenetic dungeon crawler in the style of European oil painting, was terrible in many ways, but also had a few bright spots and the odd fan. Despite being one of the worst games of 2022, some people bought it and still enjoyed its baroque end-game looting. They have until the end of February 2023 to do this. A new post on the Babylon’s fall website On Tuesday it was announced that Square Enix will shut down the servers of the always online action RPG. While co-op dungeon runs were the heart of the game, single player still shuts down with them.
“[I]We are very sorry to announce that we will be retiring the game on February 27, 2023,” the team behind it wrote. “To express our gratitude to all our players, we plan to have as many events and other initiatives as possible before the end of the service.”
Babylon’s fall will immediately stop selling its paid in-game currency and all major updates to the game have been cancelled. Season 2 will continue until the end of November, but instead of being followed by Season 3, players will simply re-earn the Ranked rewards from Season 2.
“After the service ends at 11:00 p.m. PT on Monday, February 27, 2023, you will no longer be able to play the game,” the announcement confirms. “All game data on the game servers will be deleted after termination of service.”
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$663 total value
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Despite bombing raids at the start, Babylon’s fall‘s developers were quick to reassure existing players that nothing about the game’s icy reception and dwindling player base would spoil their future plans for the live service game. “No, there are no plans to further reduce the scope of development Babylon’s fall“ you announced shortly after release.
Just a few months later in May, that message changed. The game’s developers would now be “re-evaluating” future content plans, likely given that Babylon’s fall an average of fewer than a dozen players on Steam at any given time. It sounded like an ambitious attempt to overhaul core aspects of the game was probably not on the horizon. Maybe there wouldn’t be any more big crossover content updates like that with Never automo either. But simply leaving the lights on for the few dedicated players on PC and console seemed like the least Square Enix could do. Apparently not.
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The whole debacle is remembered anthem, another ill-fated attempt by an otherwise excellent studio to grab a piece of the burgeoning games-as-a-service market. BioWare’s Ironman-inspired loot-shooter was, at least in many fundamentals, a much better game than Babylon’s fall, but it still fell off a cliff when it came to delivering a complete experience, let alone building on it meaningfully in the weeks and months after launch. Initially, BioWare seemed in on it for the long haul, too, but EA later scrapped those plans. not how Babylon’s fallhowever, anthemThe servers of are still in operation years later.
“The requirement to always be online is keeping me from purchasing this game,” wrote one user on the Babylon’s fall steam talk page back in April. “The servers will inevitably go down one day, rendering a very expensive game unplayable. If it had an offline mode, I probably would have bought it by now. Player numbers are really low, servers don’t last more than a year or two. It’s one thing to finish a free-to-play game, but something that costs $60 plus – there should always be a way to play offline.”
In the meantime, Babylon’s fall is still sold in the PlayStation and Xbox stores at the same price.
