MudMan

Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say there at the bottom. I think that’s a better fit if you assign it by mode, especially in fighting games, where the ranked/unranked/lobby difference is well established, but at least it should be in the back pocket for a F2P fighting game to avoid this scenario.

It wouldn’t be, necessarily. A bunch of games (survival games, in particular) still give you that choice. It’s cheap, reliable and doesn’t need a ton of people playing your game.

The problem is then you can’t do matchmaking, you need a server browser, which is a lot clunkier. And it does get harder to avoid cheating and so on. The experience is also dependent on how close the server is from you, and if it’s just some guy’s computer the server goes away when they’re not playing.

For fighting games specifically, where “room matches” are still a thing in most games, I do see it becoming an option as a separate mode. And man, if you’re doing something like Multiversus I do think you should consider having it ready to go as a fallback, because this is a bad look and hurts future games that may want to give this a shot.

Well, that’s the problem of GaaS. It used to be games cost however much to make and you were recouping expenses after. These days games cost money to run, on account of all the centralized backend and dedicated server cost to keep everything locked down and enable matchmaking and microtransactions.

The bizarre thing is this zombie state where pieces of the game work, but only if you bought stuff ahead of time. The idea of F2P fighting games makes some sense on the surface, but with the way audiences work in the genre it may not be feasible because… who the hell is going to buy into a fighting game that poofs into the ether the moment someone else gets a Mai Shiranui DLC again?

Looking at you, 2XKO. I played Rising Thunder. I remember.