In what has been a tumultuous past few days on X, we have seen massive pushback over the use of Steam tracker sites like SteamDB when discussing the perceived success or failure of new video game titles. Highguard is the most recent example, seeing its CCU drop more than 90% within the first 24 hours of launch. Just 45 days later, Highguard has officially shut down its servers, and will forever be remembered as "Concord 2."
It's worth mentioning that Highguard didn't seem to push an agenda in the same way that Concord, Sony's massive live service flop did, but it still struggled nonetheless to attract an audience due to its uninspired and generic characters and gameplay. That being said, many games like Concord that are labeled as "woke" or appealing to a "modern audience" tend to have the same, inevitable fate, with less than stellar concurrent player counts resulting in eventual shutdown.
The latest game being heavily dissected online is Sedleo's debut title, 1348 Ex Voto, a game featuring two LGBT characters, set in medieval Italy, and voiced by outspoken lesbian voice actress Jennifer English, and a non-binary voice actress known as Alby Baldwin. In the behind the scenes featurette for this game, the female led cast makes no attempt at hiding that this game will heavily push a pro-LGBT message, while the devs claim to be setting this in a "historical" background.
Leading up to today's release, their official account on X has done everything they can to push potential customers away, going so far as to tell one person "so long" when they said they'd only play Ex Voto if the protagonist were Joan of Arc. This came after the passive aggressive posts taking shots at their fellow indie devs working on Knight's Path.
After remaining fairly silent leading up to their release day, the Ex Voto social media manager is back at it again, this time chastising people in their replies. When one user replied in a thread that he didn't care if the game succeeded or failed, the Ex Voto account replied, "If you don't care, don't waste your time commenting on our posts :)."
Furthermore, they seemed to confirm what many people suspected, that the 250,000 players who wishlisted their game isn't actually reflective of Steam alone, but of Steam and the Playstation store combined. "That's not the case. We count here wishlists on Steam and PS5. It's simple math" they responded, when pressed by the same user about their wishlist claims.
No matter how you do the math, something isn't adding up, as the peak player count has only managed to hit 427 players at the time of writing. The game is struggling massively due to negative reviews, currently sitting at "mixed" on Steam across 82 reviews. Most of these point to similar issues, with game performance, lack of polish, and terrible character animations being among them. Many feel the game was in no condition to be released at this time.
While Sedleo is a studio of only 15 devs, and the budget for this game was likely far less than Highguard or Concord, it is yet again another cautionary tale for game devs who market their game to the fabled "modern audience."
-Minimal Effort Live on YouTube
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