[2020] A note from someone who has been burned many times... Invest gametime, but don’t invest your money yet.

An all too common tale. F2P game launches with a cash shop, state of the game is less than stellar, devs try to make it look bigger than it is with PR schemes (5 million players!... we all know that’s accounts created). I myself have dropped a lot of money on numerous games like this that have came and went. Marvel Heroes, Paragon, Hyperscape, Crucible, etc...

You can love the game and play it as much as you want while hoping it gets better, but be cautious about spending money. You can downvote and scoff, but you’ll be feeling sh*tty for dropping $100 on this game only to have it shut down by mid 2021.

Warning signs:

1. The developers have not listened to complaints and pleas about game modes, bots, things that feel bad, etc since alpha. Don’t believe me? Search some of the current complaints and look at all the threads from early alpha.

2. Chapters is story based ala GW2, not battlepass based for retention. You will have lore items to find throughout the world, etc. if that’s your thing, great. If you think it’s going to bring back a lot of players - eh. The key here is they think their game is amazing enough to pull players based on the lore. Unfortunately, it’s not there yet. They need to focus on CURRENT player retention as much as if not more than new players. The biggest supporters of this game are coming and going within a month once it gets dull and there’s really no nuance or updates. Their biggest streamer (OHpee) barely cares anymore, and the only two they have left are Marcus and Ghosty - both of which look bored as hell with the game now.

3. They have no focused vision. Listen to their interviews about game modes and the future. “Sure we think it could be a story game, an mmo, a BR, etc” they have no focus into delivering a quality experience as seen by the first two months where the BR isn’t even tuned correctly (way too many bots, map still huge, unbalanced final circles, air superiority is only endgame strat, etc )

4. Your privacy and accounts do not matter to them. There’s zero management for accounts. Who the f*ck launches an online game WITH transactions without that? Proletariat, I guess. Notice how shop items and battle packs are more important to them than your account. Once your account gets hacked - enjoy never being able to get it back :)

5. The decline of socials and support. Reddit just now hit 60k after being at 59k for over a week. Twitch is abysmal. The support is terrible. Certain individuals on their team are rude and pretentious towards players (I’m sure we all can think of who that is).

Think about how active they were the first couple weeks, now it’s very hush hush and we waited for 1.1 that.... didn’t fix anything. 1.2 will be the same, with clash being a buggy mess, player base divided further, bots on your team in clash, no way to queue parties greater than 3, etc... a very half baked patch. And of course, switch will still get black and white screens, and they still won’t make it a priority.

Just saying. These things have happened over and over at a ton of other companies and games that people just like a lot of this community defended blindly no matter what. Your lack of criticism, and your swiftness to shun anyone that criticizes the game or it’s makers, are what kill games.

Don’t spend your money yet if you are not okay with the game being closed in 6 months. Look at Proletariats last game they made, dead well under a year. Same deal. Play spellbreak all you want. Hopefully it’s still around at some point if they are able to get people who know what they’re doing to operate under a clear vision. Their current vision is “spellbreak is a huge IP that will be tons of things and go 10+ years”, when it should be “spellbreak is insert one genre here, and we are focused on delivering the best we can starting with year one”

When they use the excuse that they’re small and not very experienced - you should be worried. When they say that and still charge $8 for a minuscule back skin - you should be worried. When they lie to you about the playerbase and claim bots are a bug - you should be worried.

Downvote all you’d like, but I dare you to set a REMINDME for 6 months. Feel free to tell me off then.