Why APB Flopped
After years in development, APB (All Points Bulletin) was finally released on June 29, 2010. Two months and 17 days later on September 16, 2010 it was officially shut down and the servers taken offline. That ranks APB as one of the biggest MMO failures next to other ill fated ventures like Tabula Rasa and Asheron’s Call 2.
So what went wrong? How could a game designed to be the open world Grand Theft Auto fail so profoundly. The story begins long before the game was launched. The first problem was the payment model. With major studios converting big-budget titles like EverQuest 2 and The Lord of the Rings Online to the free to play model, how could a newly formed developer hope to release a game using the old fashioned retail method? Luke Halliwell whose been with the APB developer Realtime Worlds for six years mentioned the poor payment model decision in a blog post several weeks ago. He highlights all the changes happening the gaming scene since APB entered development, “Then a few things happened. Facebook. Farmville. The iPhone. Nintendo’s resurgence. Casual gaming. Free-to-play. It started to feel like Realtime Worlds was a massive dinosaur, building these massive things that nobody wanted,” It sucks to be caught on the wrong side of history, but plenty of companies have been able to adapt. Just look at Turbine. It started out as a traditional MMORPG developer that charged the standard $15/month subscription fee. It had great products. Dungeons and Dragons Online was similar enough to other MMORPGs to feel familiar, but offered a very narrative heavy experience with instanced dungeons.
When the game finally did release, Realtime Worlds decided to adopt the best parts about the f2p model, without ditching the retail price tag. Releasing an unfinished product is standard practice in the free to play MMORPG market. Just look at Vindictus. Only two of the five classes are available, but no one is complaining since, hey, its free! APB on the other hand required a retail (or digital) purchase that came with 50 hours of play time. Additional play time could then be purchased in hourly blocks. A monthly subscription that gave players unlimited access was also available. On top of that, a premium currency called RTW was available for use in the game. Players could purchase RTW and use it to buy in-game items from other players. The publisher would skim 20% RTW off the top of all transactions. Trying to nickel and dime users is common in some F2P games, but charging for access on top of that is taking it a step too far.
Besides including a grab bag of money making schemes, APB was released before it was finished. Players expect a finished product when they have to pay up front. Speaking to former APB players, it seems that the driving feature was unfinished and game balance was non existent. All this was planned to be fixed in future patches, but players understandably didn’t put up with, or keep paying for an unfinished game.
Not to leave off on a bad note, APB did have some amazing character creation. Players could create avatars that looked like Mario, Luigi, the Ninja Turtles, and what ever else they could imagine. Besides City of Heroes and perhaps Perfect World, few games offer that level of appearance customization. Somebody even recreated the Mystery Van from Scooby Doo! Like the similarly mafia/urban themed CrimeCraft, let’s APB resurfaces as a free to play niche title for fans to enjoy.
If you happened to have played APB during its short life, please share your experiences below. Let us know what parts you liked, disliked, and why you think it didn’t succeed. What could have been done different?
By, Erhan Altay
September 16, 2010
#
Game definitely had potential. Shoulda went f2p >_>. Crazy how it shut down in only 2 and a half months. That’s a record, I think.
September 18, 2010
#1
i reckon all struggling games should go f2p before being shut down, i just think it makes sense to try as hard as u can to save a game (because honestly not lasting 3 months is kinda sad)
September 18, 2010
#2
the games f2p
September 19, 2010
#3
Hey ReMo this is totally unrelated to this but could you do me a favour cause i downloaded Aika Global and i cant make an account could you possibly make me one and send me ID and Password ?
September 20, 2010
#4
APB will be back in the future, one of the guys at Epic (The guys responsible for Gears of War and Unreal) really liked the game and any talks about it will be confidential, I think the game will come back. Hopefully as a finished Product.
September 21, 2010
#5
People keep talking about the game being p2p but if you had a brain it was f2p after retail of course.
I spent about 1hr and got enough RTW points to pay for 2 months of game time. With no extra cost out of my pocket.
October 21, 2010
#6
I have put over 100 hours into this game. It was fun for a while but in the end lacked large scale combat and sandbox elements. We were told that the chaos servers would take a while but would be well worth the wait..Bull crap i hate real time worlds
September 17, 2010
#7
I was a beta tester, and I had high hopes for this game… Figured, “A Grand Theft Auto MMO… how can they do that wrong?”
Then the game released and there were hackers everywhere, the vehicles handled like crap, there were countless exploits, griefing was a common thing (Ex. On your way to finish a mission only to have a previous rival continuously ram your vehicle making it near impossible to make it there in time).
In the end, when I played it after the official release, and nothing was fixed, I knew the game was doomed to fail… and fail hard. Honestly, I am not at all surprised it’s been shut down. As mentioned no one wants to play a game that you have to pay for up front that’s not finished… let alone adding on a subscription (or hourly charge if you were inclined) AND what was essentially a cash shop.
This should be a lesson to other developers… if you are going to release a pay to play game, make damn sure you finish it before you release it… and for god’s sake, don’t ask people to pay an upfront price, then a subscription, and then more for in game items/gear.
The only (And I mean ONLY) reason WoW gets away with this, is that it has been on the market for years already, and their subscriber base was slowly adapted to paying for things on top of their subscription prices. Personally though, I stopped playing the second I started seeing a “cash shop feature” in WoW… Also the game was becoming way too damn easy.
September 17, 2010
#8
Vasher i agree with u 100%….. but on the WoW side i didit quit playing because i just couldint find a F2p game to go to…… but im still looking i haveint gave up
September 17, 2010
#9
For sure, should have went f2p. After playing Grand Theft Auto Multiplayer and seeing how many people play such a half assed version of an online GTA i expected APB to do extremely well, But as stated with the F2P market exploding in growth they should have gone with the flow and went F2P.
September 17, 2010
#10
Played it for two laggy hours, Driving was very very sloppy and i got two kills? Always getting killed by better players with better guns and more exp (N-Tec) Driving had about a 3 second delay on every action which made cornering very tricky in a mission where time is of the essence
September 17, 2010
#11
that seems like eveybodies excuse here why a p2p game failed is that it didn’t go f2p. well your kinda wrong. the game had bugs, and big ones at that. the payment model wasn’t what was killing the game, it was the lack of effort of the devs to give the players a solid game.
though i am dissappointed that the game shut down, i do hope that they re release it in a year under a p2p model, but with the bugs fixed
September 17, 2010
#12
I was a beta tester and i really liked it , it had many buggs and glitches but i liked it. I was goin to buy it 2 weeks before , but i though ill wait for a little , for my birthday. Then i found this o_0 .. The game was cool , i waited for it 2 years and it hold 2 months before it got taken down. I wish they could make it F2P , least then it wont be taken down ;/
September 17, 2010
#13
i havn’t play this game but i think if they solve the driving isues en make it f2p and maybe some beginners areas or something then i think it is realy a hit
btw do you guys know poison ville that game is something like a online grand theft the auto but with freakin yes i said freakin bad graphics and lag
excuse me if my englise is bad
September 17, 2010
#14
oh yeah if i would have know this game when it was online i probably played it
September 17, 2010
#15
I like how you wqrote APB as ABP and APD. xD
September 17, 2010
#16
wonder if when WoW some how starts to fail is they will have the brings to go f2p or just shut down
September 17, 2010
#17
Looked great from beta to launch! Game play balance was garbage though. They should have spent more time on game play balance.
September 17, 2010
#18
I only had the game for about 6 days before Zero Hour. I loved it from the get-go, and was able to ignore imbalences when dropped into a mission (alone) with a single-fire weapon or underpowered LMG against one or two other people with fully automatic, often upgraded weapons. In general, I think the game was great and could have become epic. Rumor has it theres still a server out there…
September 17, 2010
#19
I feel like I was ripped off….I paid 60 dollars to play a game for a month, which got cancelled a little bit more than a month later. Thanks for the article though!
September 18, 2010
#20
p2p games sucks..
September 18, 2010
#21
I agree. I still wish Atari/Perpetual made Star Trek Online F2P.
September 18, 2010
#22
I really believe that if the game relaunches as a F2P it will be a success. People tend to ignore bugs and stuff like that when they are not forced to pay.
September 18, 2010
#23
i dont want the game go die :’( it was very good i hope it will be free to play
September 18, 2010
#24
and i like every thing of the game in the beta but you must pay so i dont buy it
September 18, 2010
#25
I hate games that do this that have such GREAT potential. Tabula Rasa is one example, that was an amazing game but it just wasnt getting the popularity they hoped for….. I loved that game because you will just be walking around all of a sudden aliens would ambush you or one of your bases XD.
September 18, 2010
#26
As expected with these kinds of games….
September 18, 2010
#27
I LOVED tabula rasa but the thing is, they didn’t get many players.
Not because the game was shit because it wasn’t but because of the lack of marketing (atleast i guess) and thats probably the reason of APB’s shutdown too.
September 18, 2010
#28
I hate to say it, but the entire first paragraph of ‘what went wrong” sounds like nothing short of pro-F2P cheerleading spin.
If the game wasn’t good enough quality to warrant a P2P model (much like DDO, Tabula Rasa and others), but that’s more damning of the *game*… not the payment model.
There are still MMOs out there on the subscription model that are doing fine. There are new MMOs coming down the road that are subscription based… and all indications so far is that they’ll be doing fine – no one is complaining that the games in question are sub-based or predicting they’ll “fail” because of it.
Fallen Earth is a MMORPG developed by a small indie company that is P2P and is holding its own.
Darkfall, for all its issues, has a dedicated playerbase who continues to play it and is holding its own as P2P if not profiting.
And so forth…
I understand this site is all about F2P games and the folks behind it are clearly fans of that whole genre… but seriously, to cite “the wrong payment model” sounds more like a cop-out and pro-F2P spin-doctoring than a legitimate excuse. What you’re really saying is “The game wasn’t good enough to make people want to pay a subscription”.
September 18, 2010
#29
Well, the game clearly wasn’t good enough to make people pay for it. This site is about F2P, but both of the site admins (Myself and my Brother) both believe that free to play is the future. Just look at how many games are launching as F2P and how many old P2P games are becoming F2P.
P2P is obviously a model that can still work, but times have changed. Back when WoW came out, there really werent’ that many F2P games, or many good ones. Nowadays, there are countless VERY high quality free to play titles. So new games launching as Pay to Play have to be Exceptional to even have a chance of being successful. So many “new” pay to play games are flopping, APB isn’t the only one. Many are re-launching as free to play titles too. Fallen Earth hasn’t been around long enough to judge, but they’ve already gone through restructuring…
DarkFall Online is one of the “new” pay to play MMOs to survive and that’s because of its loyal playerbase. The fact is Pay to Play is an “Old” business model. It made sense before, but doesn’t make too much sense anymore. It’s possible for a p2p game to succeed, but free to play is the future. Just my 2 cents.
September 18, 2010
#30
The payment model wasn’t an issue just because it was a subscription.
You charge $50 for box price and a subscription fee, just like an MMO. You kind of advertise yourself as an MMO. Then you deliver a lobby-based 3rd person shooter, you now have disgruntled customers.
They sold their game to the wrong market. They sold it to the classic MMO market, and the classic MMO market was looking for something else.
If they would of advertised it throughout development as what it was, an online GTA, but lobby-based, they would of attracted the crowd looking for that.
September 18, 2010
#31
This game at times was amazing. I would get a rush when hunting down crims. The thing is people are crying f2p, f2p…screw f2p, it is ruining the market, all were getting is ghetto mmo’s.
APB while amazing had huge design issues. The lack of PvE, which even the game it was derived from had, forced it into a niche market. That in of itself will choke cash flow for the developer. All the bugs, the fact that the world was over run with hackers and the non hackers had no chance, and huge balance issues, these things can kill games.
The argument for f2p is childish at best, get a job and pay for quality services. I guarantee SW:TOR will not be f2p and will run circles around anything else coming out next year.
I currently pay for 3 MMO’sm a month and I have a lifetime sub to a fourth. I also play 4 f2p MMO’s. The best way to describe the difference is taking the city bus or taking my customized H3 to work.
I was really upset when LOTRO went f2p, but I am hoping that since it was already established and well developed it will do ok. DDO is crap. But I am hoping that since LOTRO was already established and well developed it will do OK.
I really hope someone will bring what APB could have been back to the market because some of the ideas were innovative and genre changing.
September 19, 2010
#32
you are making no sense… the F2P market is not ruining anything if it was then instead of games going from P2P to F2P they would go from F2P to P2P and there are a lot of good F2P games and also maybe some of us want to spend money in more important things other than MMOs
September 18, 2010
#33
all they did with this game is make a @#$^%^ load of money and shut it down!! assholes
September 18, 2010
#34
im updateing the game to check it out it says it made all accounts to free to play does that mean the game is f2p or no one can play it now
September 18, 2010
#35
this game beta was awful, the physics are like a 2nd rate crime craft ( wayy worse shooting then crimecraft, itneeds a roll or something to dodge with), The mission were all bland no good car chases. Its polished somewhat but really is generic i dont really value the change your visuals main thing approach
September 18, 2010
#36
Wow really, your complaining about Vindictus having two classes? How about it was in CLOSED BETA, and Evie was announced to be introduced in the Open Beta and the other two characters (elf and giant counterparts) are released as future content to keep the game interesting.
September 18, 2010
#37
the servers are up!!! the game is now free to play!
September 19, 2010
#38
Why troll?
September 19, 2010
#39
Seriously????
September 19, 2010
#40
What i liked was it was fun, and had a great potential.
What i disliked was it was boring after a while, there wasn’t any content.
What i HATED was they weren’t answering support tickets in 2-3 weeks! That was unbelivable!
September 19, 2010
#41
I was actualy a close beta tester….the game it was caina boring and thei ask to pay for it..meibe thei like joking or somthing…eniwhei i em glad is over now for them
)
September 20, 2010
#42
I played Beta,kool game, not free so sux
September 20, 2010
#43
APB didnt die because of the payment model, it died because the developers were half assed and didnt update the game or fix bugs fast enough, people lose interest in a buggy game especially when they are paying for it.
shiny graphics. How can you not afford to pay $15 a month.. The only reason you would not be able to is if you dont have a job and you sit on yer ass all day, then I say to you GET a job. Seriously I hate topics like this. Name a free to play game that has anything even close to 13 million players then you can say F2P is the future. inb4 flame.
To the OPs saying that F2P is the future, NO, F2P is ruining the MMO market by bringing out bogstandard games either complete copies of another game or a failed Korean game thats already been out 10 years. Every game with a cash shop is horrid the only GOOD F2P game as of yet is Vindictus and there isnt really much content to be had with it apart from its
September 20, 2010
#44
It’s cute how ignorant you are. Name a free to play MMO with close to 13 million players? Easy. Try MapleStory – over 100 MILLION accounts world-wide. RuneScape has 130+ million accounts worldwide. Scions of Fate (Yulgang in Asia) has 100 Million Accounts world-wide. You want to talk active players? Fantasy Westward Journey (This one is China Only) has over 2.6 million players online at once. WoW has ~1 million.
Nexon – a developer and publisher of free to play MMOs made $561 Million in revenues in 2009. Perfect World Entertainment made $314 million in revenues in 2009.
Half of WoW’s 13 million players are in China, and the don’t pay anywhere near $15/mo to play, They pay much less. Nexon’s revenues are close to WoW’s. Not exactly a fair comparison as Nexon publishes numerous games, but you get the idea.
Free to play is the future. It’s growing MUCH faster than subscription based games. In fact, “free to play” is ALREADY a bigger market than subscription based games. Subscription based games will still be around, no doubt, but F2P will continue to grow faster. APB failed because the game was unfinished and had a lot of problems.
Game Set and Match.
September 21, 2010
#45
How ignorant you are in the business world. Of course, you are if just keep botting, grindfest and RMT in F2P world. Don’t use apple and orange to compare China vs the world. In china, earn 1 cent each from its 1.3 billion people is more than enough to feed 1 for life. As gamer, if you want quality mmo gaming, p2p is a safer bet. For APB, imho, it is poor execution in game management and payment model are the killer
September 26, 2010
#46
You’re the one that’s ignorant. The FREE TO PLAY market is ALREADY bigger than the pay to play one. Oh, and sorry to burst your bubble about China, but HALF of World of Warcraft’s players are from China. Take that away and the game only has 6 million subscribers.
Free to play games ARE the future here in the West too. Look at Dungeons and Dragons Online. It FLOPPED as a pay to play game. The moment they made it free to play, revenues and profit increased 10 fold. The game was so successful, Turbine made Lord of the Rings Online free to play too. Another long time subscription game. How about EverQuest 2? It used to be pay to play, but it’s now free to play.
Look at Electronic Arts – They released Battlefield Heroes, BattleForge, Need for Speed World Online and Tiger Woods Online recently as free to play games. How about Pirates of the Burning Sea? It’s also going free to play.
Want to talk pay to play? Look at Craft of Gods. The game launched a pay to play MMORPG and insta-flopped. It re-launched recently as a free to play game. How about Warhammer Online? subscriptions cratered and it too will go free to play soon. New games that launch as F2P have a very high chance of failure. There’s room in the market for P2P, but free to play IS the future.
September 20, 2010
#47
I think vogstar entairtaiment should take over apb because they want to gife the care to a game that it needs ^^ crimecraft is the only game i play were never hear anything about hacking
September 20, 2010
#48
APB was a great concept for a game it was poorly executed
the driving was horrible although it wasn’t much to complain about after getting used to it
the weapons were terribly imbalanced as were the pre-order content
crims got the better car
there were no separate hitboxes (the gun did the same amount of damage no matter where you shot)
its a shame it went down so early but the devs didn’t cater to the gamers needs
September 20, 2010
#49
In game customer support representatives……….. and this game would possibly still be alive. If I had to make a guess as to why people stopped playing the game before servers went down it was because if there was any issue, it could not be fixed on the spot.You had to fill out a “support ticket” which would take upwards of 2 weeks to even get a response that most of the times was a macro made message that let you know they are sorry for what happened but can not help you with your issue. Losing items, failed missions due to bugs/exploits,not receiving experience or items for winning missions, and probably the single most hated things that completely killed this game, the hackers…… all could not be handled while it was happening.
A 100million$ SUPER MEGA ULTRA FLOP.
September 20, 2010
#50
I played apb until SC2 came out, I loved it but it needed a lot of work, if it had some kind of crafting and some sort of a PVE district it could have been much better.
Missions needed to be made more interesting, more involved somehow.
Weapons needed tweaks, NL9 anyone?
If they had a district where the cars were the weapons, if you could mount guns on your cars and play car wars, I think that would have made it awesome.
The zombie district idea that they were toying with was interesting.
I was hoping the game would get a bunch of patches then I was planing to play it again. Its a shame, could have been so much more.
September 21, 2010
#51
I fell so ripped of. Bought the game a month ago. I had heard of crappy bugs, a lack of balance, and rumors about it would shut down. I had APB in the right hand, and the mainstream game: CoD MW2 in the other. And i chose APB. I regret. APB was a lot of fun, for the one month, but the option i had, kept on spooking in my head. Now i know that i should have bought CoD, instead of APB, because then i would have something to play now. Wish that i could get my money back.
September 21, 2010
#52
Asheron’s Call 2 which you incorrectly claimed to be a flop was made by Turbine who you later lavished in the article.AC2 “flopped” because Turbine had a secret deal they were working on and wanted the technology they used in AC2 – later that product became known as Dungeons & Dragons Online. AC1 players also weren’t happy that AC2 was so different (something I found superior IMO) so they didn’t subscribe to AC2. New players were rare because people thought they needed AC1 experience. If it proved anything its that it is far easier to produce and market a brand new product than a so called sequel – a problem SOE still has with EQ/EQ2 as well. DDO and LoTRO have a timeless name however and would easily survive a sequel number.
September 21, 2010
#53
The game was great, but it was poorly manged. There were many complaints and technical issues that players faced, but they never seemed to get fixed or in fact they never got fixed. Real time worlds also did rush the launch and that’s probably what screwed them over.
September 22, 2010
#54
They could have saved the day with going to F2P.
What’s keeping them?
People will play the game since It’s basically not bad.
It needs more content, more balance and more refining.
September 22, 2010
#55
With how fast All Points Bulletin was rushed to retail after beta when we said not to leads me to believe the money troubles were already started before the game released. I supported with a subscription and purchasing the game and DID enjoy every min. of it. I would love for someone to pick up this title and keep it alive. APB was the most fun I had since World of Warcraft / Counter-Strike was new and fresh to me.
September 23, 2010
#56
They should’ve go to F2P because it would save them, game was a one big bug that needed to be fixed. I waited and wanted to see them to go to F2P, but then i see, APB shut down.
September 24, 2010
#57
I was beta tester since summer of 2009, it was fun game, but really.. really.. really.. really.. really and again REALLY unoptimized game. Also the graphic setting changing didn’t even work – it would not change them properly, so you couldn’t even set settings to low when you would be lagging from the highest.
September 26, 2010
#58
Lol, loved the F2P against P2P argument. Not trying to stir up an argument but P2P can not and will not become the future. One simple reason for this is ME. I will never pay for a game like Lineage II, WoW or any other P2P games still out there because I can get the exact same graphics or even better on a F2P game. I’m sure there are more than 300 000 other people out there who think like me. Well this is just one gamer’s opinion
October 10, 2010
#59
Stellar Concept, AMAZING Character/Vehicle/Graphics/Music options,.. Customization was king in this game. Then everything else was as bad as customization was good.
No Anti cheat whatsoever, there were dozens of autoaims and monthly autoaim services and it wasn’t even remotely hidden, over 20% of the user base was running some type of cheat/hack/script.
No SLI support – (an MMO released in 2010 w/no SLI? FAIL)
Even when they were fully staffed the support was a joke, worst GM’s and mods of any MMO I’ve ever played.
Physics – Horrible, they changed this several times during the life of the game but you either had cars that would only go what felt like 20MPH, or cars that would flip over and roll when taking a turn at 5MPH,
Weapons balance – Again total joke, there was never any balance, there were 4 or 5 weapons in the game that dominated and the rest were left by the wayside.
Again…amazing concept and I REALLY hope other MMO’s take that level of customization to heart (I would LOVE to have seen what RTW would have done if we’d all had homes/apartments.
Hopefully someone will do GTA online and get it right.
October 16, 2010
#60
I thought the Beta was amazing! Since they kept saying
“Its going to be One payment and thats it!” (Like guild Wars)
After the beta they said “Now you must pay for game hours”
I said nope. Not buying it.
Even though the time system was interesting, It was damn confusing!
December 6, 2010
#61
I played the Beta and everything was nice except the driving.
Driving is a great part of the game , but if you press the button for a sec your car does a whole 360 turn
Way too sensitive!
January 14, 2011
#62
personally I loved APB and to be honest RTW had originally Said they would not release until it was complete. However once the Publisher became Electronic Arts in late 2009 early 2010 they put the push on release. Just as they do with every single title they have anything to do with. Has anyone noticed how not a single EA game has been finished before it was released since the PS1 days. As soon as EA was listed as the publisher I left APB. I knew at that moment it would not last more than 3 months. Anytime EA tried online games its not given the patience Online Games need. EA is a Offline game Producer and should stick to what they know. Hopefully EA will never try to get into the online marketplace again without a complete restructure of there company to include a team that understand the monster that is an MMO. They have to be polished if you are going to charge for them. You cant expect your return in your investment in the first month. You have to be able to handle 45% of your consumers to give horrible criticism. Other than EA. APB was on the right track had they waited the extra year of development as they originally planned they would have realized to set up a micro payment pay scheme with a free download of the game. APB could have been epic and hopefully APB reloaded will be.
March 17, 2011
#63
APB IS RELAUCHED ON GAMERSFIRST!
June 14, 2011
#64
My first mmo subcription based game was star trek online…it was ok for a few months but the missions quickly got repetitive… a friend that was in on the beta for apb got me interested and after watching some youtube vids it looked to be alot of fun especially for a clan based group of people. The gameplay looked like it would always be different because the enemy is a live person. not a scripted AI. I was about to purchase this game on release but decided to wait a bit and keep reading the forums for a bit before deciding to purchase… im glad i did. because it was a downer reading the forums everyday of the gameplay being very unbalanced, people unable to complete missions, locker issues with clothing and other items, logon issues… then before i knew it, it was done, finished, down the toilet….
I eventually quit sto as well but being my first subscription based game it wasnt a horrible experience but think for a monthly sub the purchase price should be a little less… as i recall i paid 60+ bucks +15 a month sub…..
right now the only sub game i have is Iracing and ive actually taken a break from it as well but definately plan on returning. I would love to see APB come back and would consider a sub as long as they arent ass raping again.