Where did Knockout City go wrong?
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Knockout City was one of many casualties in the wave of online games that are scheduled for closure this year.
The multiplayer game, which pits teams of players against each other in a fantastical version of dodgeball, is due to shut down on June 6 – roughly two years after it first debuted. GamesIndustry.biz caught up with Guha Bala, co-founder of Knockout City's developer Velan Studios as well as long-running studio Vicarious Visions, to find out more about the reasons for this once-promising game's demise.
First, Bala emphasises that Knockout City got off to a strong start when it was published as a mid-priced premium title by Electronic Arts, with an additional boost thanks to its inclusion on Xbox Game Pass.
"We were really thrilled with the initial userbase as well as the audience reception," he says. "But by the time we had launched, mid-price premium was pretty common for multiplayer-only titles. Most of those had converted to free-to-play titles, so the competitive environment changed for pricing. It sold fairly well but not well enough to as a mid-price premium title to continue to support an additional flow of content."
As a result, Knockout City also went free-to-play one year after launch, with Velan dropping EA as publisher and handling the game independently. The business model changed, but the developer was still determined to avoid some of the more divisive strategies used to survive in the free-to-play space.
"We'd made an early commitment also to make it cosmetics only, no microtransactions, not going the loot box route or other kinds of routes – and certainly no pay-to-win because it's not the healthy essence of a
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