In recent months we’ve been hit with a slew of cancelled games, among them were some well-known and anticipated titles. So, it’s normal to begin wondering: “Why is all of this happening all of a sudden?”
In recent months, Respawn Entertainment even announced that they would be sunsetting Apex Legends Mobile, which came as a surprise to beloved fans of the mobile version. Battlefield Mobile was in the beta testing stages back in November of 2022 before being cancelled in February 2023. Heroes and Generals, an iconic free-to-play shooter from the mid-2010s era is going to be losing its support and getting shut down in mid-2023. Even a big AAA game company like Ubisoft has in recent months announced the cancellation of 7 different projects, So why is this happening all of a sudden? Why are there so many cancelled games? The answer to that might be in the Covid pandemic.
How the Covid Pandemic Affected the Video Game Industry
During the pandemic, the entire world got affected in many different ways, and the video game industry wasn’t spared from its effects either. Because of the pandemic and the lockdowns that happened during it, many people migrated to working remotely; and sadly, many other people lost their jobs. So, now you have a unique problem. You have a bunch of people who are locked up at home with a lot of free time on their hands that they wouldn’t have otherwise. The perfect circumstances to start gaming! Many people turned to video games to pass their free time, and because socializing in person was prohibited, people started socializing online instead. A great tool that can help you meet other like-minded gamers and help you socialize with them is our Team Up app. Because, after all, some of the best friends you’ll meet in your life, you’ll probably meet in-game.
Now that you have lots of people getting into gaming, the gaming industry noticed an upshoot in profits, many more people were buying new games and spending much more time playing them than before. And the free market did as the free market always does – it tried to capitalize on this phenomenon… a bit too late though.
The Investors are the Reason we get Cancelled Games
Now, let’s not vilify the investors, after all, they’re just doing their job. The video game industry, like many other creative industries, is run in boardrooms. And if you’ve been a part of a boardroom before you’d know that nothing ever gets done quickly in a boardroom. That was the main problem and the reason we have so many cancelled games nowadays. During the pandemic, the investors and the boardroom executives noticed the market opening and wanted to capitalize on it, but video game development is a slow process, and it isn’t as easy to capitalize on market opportunities as in other sectors. So, the investors did as investors always do – they threw money at the opportunity. The mobile gaming industry especially grew, as many people nowadays that would be considered “gamers”, don’t even own a gaming PC or a console, as they game on mobile.
But what happened? The pandemic eventually ended and people started returning to their regular working spaces, and all that free time that they previously had was now taken up again. The damage was already done though, the money was already gone and the projects were underway. Games that were being released were underperforming. Everything went into panic mode! So, to salvage what remained and to cut the costs, developers were forced to cancel many of the projects they had been working on for the past few months or even years; i.e, the reason we have so many cancelled games all of a sudden.
If Apex Legends Is So Popular, Then Why is Apex Legends Mobile Getting Sunset?
We’re big fans of Apex Legends at Z League, so this was quite a surprise to us. Yet, if you look at it closely from a business standpoint, the decision makes a lot of sense. Even though Apex Legends and Apex Legends Mobile are the same brand, they are still competing games. So, to prevent the mobile version from stealing away the player base from the regular version, the decision to sunset it was settled.
