I been playing since 2014 on steam and the first year i spent hours on too many free to plays games i still remember some of them so i decided to check my steam library and the 70% of this F2P are gone and no longer in the steam store

1 year ago

Comment has been collapsed.

🤔Do you have specific game names ?

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I have 76 games and one of them is ACE arena cyber evolution

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

ACE have been removed years ago.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Gotta give examples when you say stuff like this, yaknow.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Im trying to send a screenshot cause i have them archived in steam

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

just up the screenshot on imgur or something similar

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Ah, most of these seem to be multiplayer games, so that explains it. Due to a variety of factors, such as bad monetization methods or lack of playerbase, these games fail and then either fade out of existence entirely or just take up dust on the Steam Store with nobody picking them up.

I actually see a game that I used to play that has all but died there (Loadout). It just tends to be the natural flow of most free-to-play multiplayer games over the years.

Another game I thought was really fun was Battlerite, but the playerbase naturally dwindled over time, which then lead to a lack of new people joining the game and the eventual decline of the game to its current state. It is a shame, but that's the nature of these sort of multiplayer-focused games.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

i still miss infinite crisis that game came out when the mobas where a trend they got a good community growing up but they decided to shut down that game early

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

A shame, honestly. Crazy how only 3 MOBAs survived in the end (League of Legends, DOTA 2, and Smite), despite all the variety and number of games that came out in the genre.

(Heroes of the Storm is dead, and everyone knows it)

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

i think you missed a key part as to why these games disappear, mass-multiplayer games require a dedicated server. A server requires resources to maintain, and therefore money. if no one is playing anymore, then there is no incentive to keep paying for the server and it is taken down.

For a single player game, no server is required (unless is has unfriendly copy protection that requires a server), so there is nothing preventing it from being available forever, as long as you still have a system that is able to play it.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yeah, you're right. I tend to attribute that more to massively multiplayer games (only a few of his games seemed to be massively multiplayer), so I just didn't mention it :(

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Ohhh, yeah, Battlerite is my fav game of all time ;_;

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

brink was abandoned
dead island epidemic never made it out of beta
defiance was killed by Gamigo when they bought Trion Worlds (with killed every game they touch)
Evolved stage 2 was revived from the grave by the community, check their discord server
Fear online is dead
gotham died fast
Loadout never made it out of beta
mighty quest for epic loot didn't made enough cash for ubisoft

these are the ones i remember

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

If they were reliant on a server, possibly those servers had to be shut down for many reasons like they were costing more than they were making, not enough players to make a full game/match/instance, etc. If the game didn't have like.. a cosmetic shop or something, it may have closed due to money. Also maybe the player numbers just weren't there to justify keeping the servers running. Hell, maybe they just didn't want to keep updating the game for some reason.
If they weren't based on a server..... then IDK.
Depends on the game most likely.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I understand all of this situation with free to plays games but steam has became since 2012 to 2023 a graveyard for too many games not only F2P also there's some games like electric highways that where removed from the store and also more of this kind of free indies

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Even F2P games can depend on licenses. Or in case of multiplayer titles their maintenance might not be profitable anymore.
It really isn't a surprise if several games disappear after almost a decade.

And the one actual example you have, Electric Highways, got dropped because the publisher was banned from Steam.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/412140/discussions/0/1743386053135820443/

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Another example would be Marvel Heroes. A fun F2P that died after 5-6 years because their player base had fallen off and they couldn't afford Marvel's licensing fees anymore.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

cost vs player base vs time needed to keep content fresh

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I'm surprised Spiral Knights is still around. Been playing that recently to finish achievements.

Started playing in 2011, the year it came out. It's funny: the fifth achievement I got was in Oct 2011, the sixth was in Oct 2021. To be able to take a decade-long hiatus from a F2P game is crazy.

Having been around for nearly 12 years now, I figure it's gotta be nearing the end. Through Steam, there are never more than 200 simultaneous players at any given time.

While obviously these things get taken down when they are no longer profitable (SK must still have some whales), it would be interesting to learn about the details of specific games, I guess.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

i thought that games was taken down lol i played spiral knights at the end of 2014

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Also played it.
Mega grind for free players.
By the time i was ready to hunt for end game gear i was bored with it.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yeah, it's not particularly fun.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

The genre just started to move unto other things. The early 2010s were too saturated with many of them free MMOs, eventually the big online games went to be hero shooters, later battle royales and right now that one's losing well "steam" too. Currently there's also all the online mobile games too but even big ones just don't get enough attention to keep going. Just saw EA is closing APEX and Battlefield mobile which you'd think are big enough but guess not.

Too much cost and saturation of same type of games.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

i still remember the battlefield game like TF2 i didnt played cause in those years before epic store we got the on the house from origin so i was playing dead space and battlefield 1942

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I used to play 'Dragon's Prophet' too, it was a fun game.
'Defiance' has been remade into 'Defiance 2050', but it was pretty much a money grab as the game is pretty much the same and the graphics has only been slightly improved and this version was also closed down.

If you really want to play some of the games, there is a small chance you could find a community ran game.
I loved to play 'BattleForge' back in the day, so I was sad that it was closed down, but now there is a fan-based version of the game named 'Skylords Reborn'. So with some luck, maybe there is a fan-based version of some of your favorite titles.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

there's some of this closed games that have private server like evolve but they are a minority

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

F2p was a new trend at that time together with microtransactions I think. I used to play some of them, mainly Planetside2 and Warframe in 2013. It was so much fun, then I moved on.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

im still playing warframe and also thats my most played game on steam next to TF2 and dota 2 but i stopped playing some of my favorites f2p like warface years ago, when i started my account on steam this is literally all i got and also some free games that u could get from tremorgames, desura etc...

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Does it also dissapear from your steam library?

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

no, but u cant play them anymore

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

what? it can't be launched?

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yes and no, some of this games can be played with private servers or hamachi but some others are gone for forever even if u try to play them at the moment u download and install the game the servers will be off

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

What happened? Games that solely rely on people playing them are going to cease to exist when they are not played anymore by a sufficient number of players.
I know the F2P trend seemed promising to many but the market got too saturated (it still is) and to an extent it corrected itself by time.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Like i said before, steam is now a graveyard of F2P games indies included

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yeah, although its not a steam specific thing, many more bled out on their own. I once played a cutesie anime mmo called Dragonica. To my knowledge, that one has been shut down for good too.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I don't see it in your stash, but Dungeons & Dragons Online is still putting out new content. :)
And it has the best build customization around.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Who is playing that game?????

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Lots of people, but we mostly just use Steam for alternative access or payment.
DDOAudit has some info.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I hope neverwinter will still be alive

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

On rare occasions popular online games are reverse-engineered. There's a single player playable version of the old Neverwinter Nights AOL online game.

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Whats wintry mix ?

1 year ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Sign in through Steam to add a comment.