Ubisoft Says Roller Champions Will Keep Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' on PS4

Too bad they didn't have the foresight to make it an offline paid game. Then they could've continued selling it and making at least some money after canceling any future updates.

@Milktastrophe Does the concept actually lend itself to that? I’m struggling to think of any conceivable way that a roller derby sports game designed to be played by 6 people could be adapted to an offline experience.

Gotta cut your losses. If no one wants to play your f2p game, then they surely arent spending money. No need to keep pouring resources into it. Pretty much sums up red dead online, the money part, not the playing part.

@nessisonett why wouldn't it work with bots? That works for every other sports and racing game.

All hail the glorious live service model.

Man Ubisoft on the whole looks like its days are numbered. Which each cancelled game and discontinued service it looks like an acquisition or just straight up bankruptcy in on the horizon. They better hope the next Assassin's Creed isn't a flop...but if it goes the same live service route I definitely won't play it.

i’m glad it flopped , i hope we can start getting AAA material again and a closer end to all these cartoony ass games .

@nessisonett give me a pro wrestling styled Roller Derby game from the 70s. Full of backstage drama, rivalries, and as much 70s cringe they can fit on screen. I'd buy the hell out of that!

Looks as though they are chopping all the dead wood away..makes sense as the resources required to keep these games that are obviously not getting played thus not bringing in the money can be put to better use elsewhere..i think assumptions about ubisofts imminent demise are a tad on the premature side..i for one would not want to see them go..

How long before the vultures at Microsoft strip the bones at Ubisoft? Sorry I mean “save” them

Ahh the beauty of love service games. They’re always temporary. This game isn’t my cup of tea (most of Ubisoft’s current barstardisation of all their Tom Clancy IP isn’t either).

They need to roll the incompetent suits at the top, even if they were there from the beginning. They need to start focusing on making great games first, instead of building ***** games around monetisation.

@Artois2 don't think they will, ubisoft just aren't good anymore and their games arent selling no where near Activisions games, ubisoft don't have a title like call of duty, overwatch or diablo that each have over 20 million players, then King which has over 100 million players on android games.

People are bored of far cry games, surely the series needs to end soon, not much more they can do with watch dogs, and assassins creed games get bashed every year, just dance wouldn't work on xbox and rabbids is a Nintendo ip. And finally rainbow six extraction flipped hard.

Only thing worth anything from ubisoft is rainbow six siege and that's already on gamepass.

Plus why would Microsoft spend billions on them if all they need to do is get the subscription ubisoft+ into gamepass.

And finally I honestly doubt the FTC will let Microsoft buy another billion dollar mega corp

The more live service flops that pile up really begs the question that a lot of these companies (including Sony) should be asking, is the very small chance of becoming the next Fortnite really worth the gigantic risk of flop?

I remember a few years back Ubisoft appeared to be a titan in the gaming industry, and their position in the market seemed unmovable. After the success of some of their live service games like Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor they realised how lucrative microtransactions are, and decided to make everything, even their single-player games like Assassin's Creed, live service. Now they're at the point where they're realising chasing the biggest gaming trends by making uninspired games with half-baked mechanics is a poor business model. It's so surreal to see this once great company struggling, but it was their own lack of foresight when greenlighting projects that lead to their downfall.

@Milktastrophe The reason they made it free to play is because that style of game has become more lucrative than paid games with multiplayer. At least with free to play games, people are willing to try it and possibly get sucked in, while paid multiplayer games would put off a large portion of people from playing the games just from looks alone, making it very possible that they would've earned far less.

I only needed to play one match in the beta to know it was a dead duck, it was incredibly dull.

@ATaco
Maybe if they started making half decent games again, they would've been successful.

Ubisoft's desperation for trying to be overly cool and hopping on every bandwagon for the next big thing is pathetic and they deserve their failure.
Most of their games nowadays scream "how do you do fellow kids" vibes or trying to cash in on live service with crappy games that have unsustainable clunky Ubisoft gameplay

I love Rocket League. I played Roller Champions an hour or so and then went back to Rocket League.

@nomither6 Exactly, all of those games looks alike and are so forgettable. Those dev teams are literally wasting their time with development.

Feel bad for the people forced to make this, but its Ubisoft fault trying to chase the live service unicorn with every game they make nowadays.

There are to many F2P games and people only have so much time. You can pump out hundreds of game but they all are build to soak up your time to get you invested.

@Matej Not only that the games have no value no reason to keep playing them. Its not possible to play all the games with their daily login bonus, character passes, seasonpass, battlepass it just takes to much time. And if you didnt spend anything then its quite easy to toss aside.

And this is why live service games are always risky to develop and sometimes not wprth pouring sweat into it unless the higher ups REALLY care for the IP.

That is a shame, developers put mad time into it only to get cancelled afters months being online.

@nessisonett Does anyone remember the Bitmap Brothers 16-bit classics ‘Speedball’ (1988) and ‘Speedball 2’ (1990)? Inspired by the original ’Rollerball’ movie from 1975 they were great fun as local vs. sport games, with Speedball 2 increasing single player interest by building up a team with individual players. ‘Speedball 3’ could well succeed today as an ultra-violent future-sport game.

They just wanted their own rocket league but those games seem a risky gamble imo. Obviously if they pay off they pay off big but so many fail I’m surprised they took the risk.

They should stick to their strengths. What happened to the amazing 2D raymans, child of light and their decent open world stuff. Come on Ubisoft trying to be cool is very uncool.

@Andywax oh yes speedball 2 on the Amiga was perfection…

The devs have tweeted that Roller Champions isn't being canceled. The Grubb gets another one completely wrong.

Update = damage control

Who believed Grubb? The man never gets anything correct and is one of the worse insiders around

So basically wait and see what happens.

Can't hear. I'm playing warner bros smash.

Yet another article on what Grubb comes out with ,is this site in a deal with him to post his bs ?

Yeah, just like how Babylon’s Fall super duper promises that it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

It will be. Obviously.

And this game will also get the axe sooner rather than later.

My guess is that this game is indeed scheduled to be getting shut down. So the team comes out and says this to try and ease concerns.

It’s not like they can come out and truthfully say, “Yeah we’ll be canned soon. But pretty please come spend money until then.”