Square Enix had its own take on the mecha shooter Titanfall with a free-to-play title called Figureheads that released on PC in March 2016, and the company announced today that it will shut down on June 30, 2018.
In the termination notice, Square Enix shared a bit of info on why it is shutting down. It started as a project that aims to combine shooter elements with strategic gameplay, to provide players with “an experience you can only have in this game.”
While the developers had ambitions for the game, in the end it appears to have been a case of having too much going on that made things over-complicated for new players. Square Enix says a lot of people did get to try the game out, but most customers ended up not playing a single game with the main reasons being “the mecha controls are too hard,” “game rules aren’t simple,” and “game speed is too slow.”
Square Enix felt that these were fatal flaws for any competitive game, but since it did have some fans who really got into it, they continued adding more such as non-competitive modes, a PvE mode to help you get used to the controls, game balance and game speed adjustments, and so on. The game also got a PS4 release in March 9, 2017.
The company was able to keep its players thanks to its continuous fixes and adjustments through updates, but it was becoming increasingly difficult in terms of providing long-term service to the player base, so Square Enix decided to terminate all services for it on both PC and PS4.
Micro-transaction sales and content update will end on March 22, and the client will no longer be available for download on June 28, a couple days before its final day of service on June 30, 2018 at 4:00pm JST.
Figureheads is available on PlayStation 4 and PC in Japan. You can check out our previous report to see how the game plays.
Published: Mar 15, 2018 03:00 am