In a world filled with live service games that want to squeeze as much money as they can from their respective player bases, Babylon’s Fall is one of the most infamous. The game, developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix, has been an unmitigated disaster. It’s been criticized for its gameplay on micro and macro levels, its writing, its graphics, its monetization, and basically every other aspect that makes a video game a video game.
With the game only ever reaching a concurrent player peak of about 1,200 and its servers set to go offline in February 2023, less than a year after its release, PlatinumGames’ CEO Atsushi Inaba has taken the time to officially apologize to fans. Included in that apology, however, is a chilling promise: he wants to make more live service games.
A simple search for Babylon’s Fall on YouTube will bring up countless videos on how laughably bad the game is, but even just watching the trailer, aka “the good stuff” the developer stitched together to entice people to play the game, can give you an impression on just how poor the game looks and feels. But despite releasing a game in 2022 that looks like it was made using the same engine as Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, Inaba says the universal panning and short lifespan of Babylon’s Fall have not altered the studio’s plans to move forward with more live service games in the future.
“Any disappointment that we might have caused for our fan base is something we feel extremely sorry about,” Inaba said to VGC in an interview. He also noted that he could not comment on certain aspects of Bablyon’s Fall’s development due to agreements with Square Enix, but that ultimately, the studio had learned important lessons from the game and would not abandon live service games going forward.
It’s not like Platinum is a bad studio; on the contrary, it’s an extremely successful one, boasting development credits for the Bayonetta series as well as NieR:Automata. They know how to make games that are fun to play. It’s just that Babylon’s Fall was so catastrophically terrible that any game that new IPs from the developer, especially those that plan on following live service monetization models, will most likely be regarded with healthy suspicion at best.
Platinum will make a new live service game at some point in the future, that much seems clear. The real question is if players will be willing to give the studio another chance.
