Tributes | SaveRumbleverse

Rumbleverse was Doomed to be a Tax Write Off

sonnecrv
Dec 3, 2023

An interview with Chelsea Blasko (CEO of Iron Galaxy) was published recently by Axios where she discusses how the studio was able to survive this past year without laying off any employees, despite having a major project shut down shortly after release. You may know that project as Rumbleverse, the best (and possible shortest lived?) BR game ever created.

Iron Galaxy is an excellent game developer and the points made within the article should be taken to heart by other game studios who frequently lay off a large number of employees after a game has released. They've worked out a responsible way to manage the company so that if a project underperforms or even fails, the people who worked on the game can be reassigned rather than rendered jobless. This has been well documented in past interviews at this point, but I do recommend reading the full article if you have any interest in game development or the business side of a studio:

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/27/iron-galaxy-rumbleverse-killer-instinct-chelsea-blasko

However, the article goes on to provide two short but very important glimpses into the fate of Rumbleverse - One of which provides incite into the high and perhaps unfair expectations that Epic Games may have for the games it publishes now.

First, we'll start with the comment that confirms the suspicion many players had about why Rumbleverse was shut down:

"We had millions of people playing it. We just didn't have people spending money on it," Blasko remembers.

Generally speaking, millions of players should be considered an incredible success if true, as the vast majority of games are far less active. Considering the lack of marketing done for the game and the amount of people who didn't learn about Rumbleverse until the announced shutdown though... perhaps this is a bit of an exaggeration. My lobbies certainly did not fill up after the game had been out for a few weeks and it's hard to believe that such a significant percentage of the player base dropped off that quickly. Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure since Epic doesn't release that information.

Either way though, It doesn't matter how many people are playing a free game if there are too few actually spending money on it. In fact, it would only increase the costs of running it, and that's bad for business. Admittedly, I struggled to find things I wanted to buy in the shop after I had settled on my signature character outfit, but I did purchase the largest package of Brawlla Bills available (plus more) for when something new peaked my interest. Some players have suggested that Iron Galaxy was not "predatory" enough in the way they monetized it - Offering a battle pass that more than pays for the next is wonderful for players, but it may not have been ideal if the goal is to get rumblers to open their wallets regularly.

If you're interested in dueling opinions on character customization both in Rumbleverse and as a whole, check out our podcast with Inertia here: Rumbleverse Character Customization and Fashion w/ Inertia - 4th Wall Splat Podcast - Ep.4

This leads into the more shocking bullet point within the article about how little time Rumbleverse was actually provided to succeed:

Epic told Iron Galaxy of the looming closure in late 2022, sending the studio scrambling to find work for about 65 developers — a third of the company — who'd been on the game.

For those of you who were too excited on release day to remember what day it was, Rumbleverse went live on August 11, 2022. This means that Epic informed Iron Galaxy they were shutting down Rumbleverse Less than 4 months after it had been released. Why is that number important and disheartening? Because any new content and large changes to the game itself are being worked on at least 6 months to a year (often more!) ahead of when they are actually released. Therefore, Epic Games did not even provide Iron Galaxy a chance to course correct once they realized it wasn't making as much money as they expected it to. If Rumbleverse wasn't an instant success, it was effectively dead in Low Key Key's pristine waters even before that island had been towed over on October 15th, 2022.

So now we must consider again if a return to Grapital City could happen in the future. If it actually is true that millions of people joined the rumble, how many would return if they had to make one up front purchase? Even a small percentage of a million people could make for a profitable release, although it would be unfair to expect the frequent content stream of a live service, and someone has to host the servers. Could it work if that responsibility is moved to the players? Ultimately, it will be up to people like Chelsea Blasko to decide whether it's worth their time to make all the changes required to rerelease Rumbleverse again. Only they know the real stats behind player counts and average spending. It certainly would be a shame to waste what we have already played though.

I will be forever grateful that a game as unique and fun as Rumbleverse was able to be created and released, even if the time was short lived. However, I'd be lying if I said this news won't forever bitter my opinion of Epic Games, who wrote it off quickly without any chance to overhaul its monetization system. I'd have expected better of a publisher who's multi-billion dollar game (Fortnite) took literal years and a major redesign after its initial release before it became what it is today...

#SaveRumbleverse

THE LOW KEY-KEY WALL
OF MEMORIES

Our One Christmas Wish

Rumbleverse was Doomed to be a Tax Write Off

Skip Leggerday Fan Art by Nick Baker

#SaveRumbleverse

THE LOW KEY-KEY WALL OF MEMORIES

THE LOW KEY-KEY WALL
OF MEMORIES