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News Knockout City (F2P dodgeball game) is shutting down, but the developers are releasing tools to allow fan-made servers to exist.

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Krvavi Abadas

Krvavi Abadas

Mr. Archivist
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June 6th.​

this really should happen with every game going through a server discontinuation TBH.
The Private Hosted Server edition of Knockout City will be available for free as a standalone download for Windows PCs in the coming months. Players will be able to download this separate version of the game to host for their friends, or join someone else’s server. We’ll have more details as we get closer to releasing this.
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for the record, this game was originally published by EA before eventually becoming self-published by Velan themselves.
i can't imagine EA would have given permission to do this, so they really made a good call splitting when they could.

they're doing a big finale event as you'd expect from it, with microtransactions going down on February 28th. so maybe you could throw them a few bucks for support?
 
I remember hearing this was pretty good. It's a shame, but that's how it goes if you don't hit it big with these types of games.
 
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Too many GAAS vying for attention. When you come out you better hit hard. I hope the game at least made a profit, I heard it was fun.
 
The over-saturation of GaaS has to be hitting all of these publishers really hard.

Or maybe it’s all for the same reason that Netflix, HBO Max and the like are canceling all of these shows. Write them off as losses.
 
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Yeah the F2P multiplayer bubble is bursting. Roller Champions has gotta be next.

But this one sucks cause I used to play it a lot back in 2021 and some of 2022. Fun Dodgeball game! At least they're doing like Killer Queen Black devs did and are allowing an "offline" form of playing it, in a sense.
 
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meatbag said:
Yeah letting fans make private servers is about the best way you can go about this.

But man GaaS has been hit hard, wonder what’s up.
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-There's way too many games trying to take up way too much of gamers time. Similar thing happened with MMOs. There isn't as much room for them as developers once thought
-F2P model makes it easier for gamers to try out but also makes it just as easy to drop and uninstall. People are more willing to commit time to a game they've already decided to purchase.
-Whales are less willing to sink money in games that obviously seem like they are going to not last that long given how many have been shutting down lately, making more of them shutdown also.
-Alot of the cosmetics f2p model is designed around peer pressure and flaunting the cash you've spunked into the game. Smaller communities means less pressure and less people for the sort of players who get off on showing off their cosmetics to gloat infront of.
 
meatbag said:
Yeah letting fans make private servers is about the best way you can go about this.

But man GaaS has been hit hard, wonder what’s up.
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I'm thinking it's just saturation

There are already a lot of these games out there and constantly pushing out content, and I feel like at this point a lot of the potential audience already has a couple they're invested in. So it's become fairly hard to break into the GaaS space
 
GaaS giveth and taketh away. Shame, I heard it was fun and good on the devs for letting people still play if they really want to.
 
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This is probably the classiest way that you could handle this kind of situation. Knockout City may be over, but thanks to the standalone PC release, the game won't be dead and people who love the game can still enjoy it. Props to Velan for taking this step, and I hope they can have a stronger hit on their hands in the future.
 
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meatbag said:
Yeah letting fans make private servers is about the best way you can go about this.

But man GaaS has been hit hard, wonder what’s up.
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People have finite time, it's unsustainable for every company to try to compete to be the game that you'll be playing -and paying for- for years
 
Oh look, it’s yet another GAAS title crashing and burning. Will publishers ever learn and stop trying to crowd a ridiculously oversaturated market with yet another roll of the dice? Of course not!

Cool on Velan Studios for putting out an alternative version with private server support though. Kudos. Hope they all land on their feet (and that Nintendo give them another project after Mario Kart Live).
 
Yeah it definitely feels like we've hit peak GAAS. Which is a shame because this and Rumbleverse were both fun twists on the usual concepts. It's going to take something that really captures gamer's imagination to break up the current batch I feel. Don't think that will stop company's trying, but still
 
This was a pretty fun game, i played about 30 hours around when it came out. Sad to see it go but it also didn’t really have that hook to keep me coming back forever
 
Dcubed said:
Oh look, it’s yet another GAAS title crashing and burning. Will publishers ever learn and stop trying to crowd a ridiculously oversaturated market with yet another roll of the dice? Of course not!

Cool on Velan Studios for putting out an alternative version with private server support though. Kudos. Hope they all land on their feet (and that Nintendo give them another project after Mario Kart Live).
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That’s part of it but another, & more likely, is unlike say Ninjala, Knockout City never found an audience from the get go. The announcement trailer all but sealed its shut down sooner rather then later.
 
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touchfuzzy said:
This was a pretty fun game, i played about 30 hours around when it came out. Sad to see it go but it also didn’t really have that hook to keep me coming back forever
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Yeah unfortunately this was me too.

Although I have been thinking about jumping back in since the new year came around.
 
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That's the best move to preserve the game legacy and at least provide something for the community of gamers born around it.

It also means caring about your work and what you built.

Wish something like that could have happend with other titles, like Matrix Online for example....
 
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the private server hosting tools are now live
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    (link)
    With the Private Hosted Server Edition of Knockout City you can host a server for others to connect to, or jump into a Crew Vehicle and join the fray after connecting with others. The dodgeball battles don’t ever stop!
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    maybe the admins here could create their own server specfically for Fami?
     
  • Index
    • Soul Skater said:
    -Alot of the cosmetics f2p model is designed around peer pressure and flaunting the cash you've spunked into the game. Smaller communities means less pressure and less people for the sort of players who get off on showing off their cosmetics to gloat infront of.
    Click to expand...

    Salient point and one I'll use in the future. By then I'll have forgotten who exactly I stole it from, so let me just credit you now pro-actively for all future discussions of the f2p/GaaS business models involving myself from now until the day I die due to lack of player interest.
     
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