ampersandrew

It's fine and natural for populations of an online game to wane over time. Trying to cheat that comes with too many negative consequences.

Rising Thunder was eventually released for free, server binaries at all, years later, but I don't have the same faith in 2XKO.

Fighting game characters take too long to make. The tried and true Riot method doesn't work when you can't get new content out at a regular clip, so people would have easily unlocked everything for sale without paying for it. The only option was a huge grind to attempt to make it sustainable. We'll see this problem again when 2XKO comes out.

Grabbing it before then still means interacting with their freemium currency, so it's an expensive purchase. They could just sell the game for $40, but that would make too much sense.

Wow, I wasn't confident this game was still happening after so long, but the timing could hardly be better, since I started reading Rainbow Six.

This is a larger trend with how much these games cost and how much the console market has shrunk. I think they just realized that one line crossed the other line while the ABK purchase was in limbo.

Games have short marketing cycles these days, so it's not much of an indicator for when it's due to release. Perfect Dark wasn't there either, and I think both are allegedly slated for this year.

There are an enormous number of reasons why the video game industry could never work like Hollywood above and beyond unions.

3 is my favorite, and I get why people like 2, but it was my least favorite. (Of the original 3. I don't even count Andromeda.)

Personally, I don't even like piracy as a form of protest. It means you're spending time on their game when you could be spending time and money on a game that respects your values. Plus, if you like the game, you're still spreading positive word of mouth. I don't need to play Horizon when there's so much else out there.

The thing is, the trust is gone. I still might not buy their games again unless/until they resume releasing them on GOG.

Dead of Winter - The co-op variant of the game, without a traitor. Zombie apocalypse game.

Meeple Party - A co-op game about throwing a party and making sure personality types don't clash. Perhaps on the nose for your group, but I still recommend it.

Mental Blocks - Once again, play the variant without a traitor. This is a game about solving a 3D puzzle from different perspectives with limited abilities to communicate or touch certain blocks.