Home Gaming Amazon’s Crucible is going back to the closed beta drawing board a mere month after release

Amazon’s Crucible is going back to the closed beta drawing board a mere month after release

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Video games have a bit of a more open development process these days. Most of them, anyway. If you’re on PC, it’s not exactly uncommon to hear of players talking about their experiences in Early Access games, forays into upcoming games wherein all the reported bugs, ideas and requests from players are factored into the making of a title and a studio eventually announcing that the project is done.

Even if a game is just coming out of a beta phase, a nip and a tuck on the mechanical side is never far away. Find a fault, pop a patch and if you’re Bungie pray that your latest fix doesn’t break something else in the sandbox. Seeing a game go back to its beta state after it was just released though? That’s practically unheard of in this day and age. Crucible is unfortunately setting that dismal benchmark, as the game has been nothing short of a commercial flop since it launched earlier this year.

On the critical side, the game has received “enh it’s okay I guess” reviews from critics and fans alike, leading to its studio to adopt a new cunning strategy: Make access to Crucible more exclusive, and reverting back to a closed beta state. Okay now I want in. Let me in. LET ME IN!

“We’re setting up a community council, made up of beta participants of all playstyles from casual to highly competitive players, who we’ll be working especially closely with,” said Crucible franchise lead Colin Johanson in a blog update.

One of the biggest changes you’ll see is that we’re going to schedule dedicated time each week when we as devs will be playing with the community and soliciting feedback. We’re setting up a community council, made up of beta participants of all playstyles from casual to highly competitive players, who we’ll be working especially closely with. We’ll have more information on that council, as well as our weekly play schedule, soon.

If you’re someone who actualy bought Crucible, you’re fine. If you were sitting on the fence and planning to grab it, you’ll need to touch wood, head to the game’s main website and hope that your application to enter it is successful. All four of you. Perhaps it’s a testament to just how high the bar has been raised for quality in games, that even a project backed by the considerable financial muscle of Amazon can’t make a dent in the market when so many other quality alternatives exist within that space.

Good luck, Crucible. Nobody wants to see a game fail, and maybe gating off access to the game will result in players suddenly wanting to know what’s going on inside of those servers. After all, it’s too early in the decade to be talking about another Battleborn.

Last Updated: July 1, 2020

One Comment

  1. I think most studios could learn from what this guys are doing. They took feedback from the community and decided to go back and fix the issues instead of abandoning it.

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