This is the grave-hoard of unfulfilled dreams, wasted potential, and the general gaming industry’s usual M.O. of :
corporate exec’s greed → smearing stakeholders → implementing buzzword driven mechaniscs and monetisations → rushing and compromising product → failing to meet expectations → kill it with fire!
Tl,DR: ME ANGRY!
You might be thinking I was talking about the recent news of Bungie sunsetting Destiny 2 development to mere maintenance mode; no way, far from that. I am talking about Warhammer 40.000 Horus Heresy Legions (Hearthstone but Warhammer 30.000) shutting down its server for good in September 2026.
I am usually pretty resilient against BS monetizations, with a few notable exceptions (Guild Wars 1 and 2 because I adore the games and they went explicitly against the giants (WOW and FF11/14 and EverQuest with no subs back when they were a thing) thankfully my brief FOMO spending spree in Fire Emblem Heroes ended as quick as it started and back then you could classify it as a learning experience) but I must confess I gave in to the friggin FOMO Hype with HHL at the beginning and bought a handful of the Alternate-Art card Primarchs back when they were first released. While Standard Gold/Legendary Primarchs could be bought with in-game currency back when they released the game, they were NEVER in the shop…only the Alternate Art ones…but those would NEVER release for in-game currency, only for real-world cash. They were clever about it. The standard Legendary Primarchs were in the shop only after the game started to plateau. Before it was random RNG from card packs or go for the Alternate Art ones…which often are more shiny, have more badass voicelines, and are EXPENSIVE as heck. Now I have 80% of the old-school Ingame earnable Legendary Bosses from the first, and about 50% of the aborted second season.
While I bemoan my sunken coasts like any other first-world problem whiner these days, I can accept sunsettig games, happens all the time. And I was always glad the ones going down the drain weren’t my thing, aside from the times they revived great old classic franchises, but not as a single player game, but a sloppy gacha game which tanked in less than a year (Breath of Fire Gacha, Atelier Gacha, Langrisser Gacha, etc.). But not this time. It is a difference if you go into maintenance mode or shut down the servers. Who the fuck cannot pay for a card game server for a handful of years with that small dedicated fanbase in maintenance mode? I understand not completing the second season of cards at roughly 75%. But server? This is really a shitty move. I haven’t really started deckbuilding with the season 2 cards yet because I was still slowly building my collection with my favourite factions. The only reason I can understand (not accept) is the usual way Games Workshop uses its licences… they must have given Everguild a 10 year license. Back then probably asked for an arm and a leg, and asking it now again…so Everguild kills the whole thing. If games like Guild Wars 1 (which released in 2005, went semi-maintenance in 2009ish and full maintenance mode in 2012 when GW2 released) can have servers still up and running 20 years after release (and now getting a true second wind with new content (not dissimilar to WoW Classic but much smaller in scope) and a mobile launch to boot right now why cannot GW give reasonable licenses?
I just wanted to play with my brother…we haven’t much time and overlapping interests anymore…but this game had us interact more often to unwind after a particularly shitty day…smacktalking over bad card draws ftw!
Anyways, is there any game you want to pour one out for that died a shameful death, not because your PC ate your game compact-disc and died, but because an exec flipped a switch because reasons?
