Gotham City Impostors goes free-to-play on Steam

So now we’ve all thrown money out the window.

From what i’ve read the PC Port was really bad, so i guess you could say you already did throw the money out the window when you bought it.

That’s a very mature way of looking at it. So I’m not gonna!

Technically all the ports were bad though. It wasn’t working on any platform when it launched.

I guess this is totally understandable and inevitable from a business perspective, but it just kinda brings home the point that if a developer and a publisher manage to fuck up a game really bad, and you pay for it, then they can still just change the business model as soon as they get slapped financially, and your money is just spent on nothing.

Again, that’s evolution baby, but it’s really no wonder that the industry has the sort of reputation it does. We don’t get no respect!

@2 I believe the free-to-play version is Steamworks rather than GFLW, so I imagine it’s much improved.

On the 360 this game is topnocth, since the patch that came in the next month after the release, great game with great vertical gameplay, great weapons and gadgets, very different for what it is available on other games, and for me is the best FPS multiplayer game, on consoles that is.

@4 Wow, they took out GFWL?

What do you know. Maybe Warner Brothers do listen to what people say about their games, after all.

That’s a lot of former GFWL adoptors at this point. THQ are out, Signal Studios are out.

Now we just need to wake up Capcom, Double Fine and WB.

@3:

You could also look at it from a different perspective.

I dunno if the game was successful, but i actually think it’s the company’s way of making sure that the game does not simply die. Imagine you buy a game for 40 bucks and because it’s such a bad port, people stop playing it. The developer invests time to fix it, but the players don’t return. Even if you want to play it, there’s no one on the servers.

A ‘re-release’ catches peoples attention. The servers are full again and you could actually go back to play it. I see it as a chance for the developer to make their game relevant again.

@7 It was an unmitigated disaster. It actually compelled me to write my first real games journalism article, because it was so bad

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/02/22/the-defenestration-of-gotham-city-imposters/

Within a month it was gone from Steam’s Top 100, and it never got higher than 700 concurrent users. That’s why Monolith recently had to fire a number of the people on the team.

Thing is, Monolith had a patch ready on day one, but because it had to go through Microsoft’s certification, it was left to rot for a month before people could get it.

Obviously most had left by the time it came out. And that’s far from a unique story when it comes to GFWL. Rumor has it that Microsoft don’t even have a GFWL team, but just cycle guys in whenever it’s time to do something. Or do nothing, as it were.

Thankfully most of their customers are leaving as a result. Signal Studios pretty much said that GFWL was the reason they didn’t have multiplayer in Toy Soldiers. Next game is going to be Steamworks as well.

I think it did slightly better on the 360, but they got the patch before everyone else.

@8 Ah, I remember I’ve read your article back when the game launched. Great piece, by the way .

On-topic, this is a great opportunity for me to check this out. I’ve wanted to do so for some time now, but I’ve heard bad things about it. Anyone up for a game?

So what do people get if we purchased the game :/