Summary
The shooter genre has been popular in video games since the days of arcades but truly became a recurring staple in the industry with games likeDoom,GoldenEye 007, as well as more recent titles likeSplatoonandTitanfall. However, there’s one subgenre of shooters that is quite lacking these days: the character-based hero shooter.
Popularized by titles likeTeam Fortress 2, the hero shooter is dominated by franchises likeOverwatchandValorant. Due to market oversaturation, there are plenty of great hero shooters that sadly don’t last for very long. These hero shooter games have all had their servers shut down at one point or another, thanks to the monopoly held by these far more popular games.
LawBreakerswas released in August 2017, but within a year its online servers were shut down due to a lack of funds. The game, admittedly, didn’t do much to innovate the hero shooter genre, with players assuming the role of a character in either team Law or team Breakers, featuring game modes like capture the flag, turf war, and even a ball-based sport.
Despite positive reviews,LawBreakerswas discontinued and removed from the Steam store after being made free-to-play for a short period. Although director Cliff Bleszinski hasteased a future for the series, there likely isn’t much of an audience these days for a hero shooter that has been inactive for over five years.
Compared to the previous game on this list,Concordhad an even shorter lifespan. Sony spent nearly a decade developing the game, throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into it, finally releasing it for PC and PlayStation 5 in August 2024. In only a few weeks, its abysmally low sales caused the game’s servers to be shut down and its developer to be shut down by Sony.
It’s a shame that Sony barely gave this game a chance to find its audience, given the inclusion of sixteen different playable characters of various alien races. The game even had a few decent reviews despite the mixed reception, so for Sony to completely abandon it after less than a month says something about the company’s overall poor development process.
Amazon had high hopes for the first game to come from Amazon Game Studios. However,Cruciblemay have been a bit ambitious, entering the highly competitive market for hero shooters. The only thing that differentiatedCruciblefrom these other more successful hero shooters was the lack of certain archetypes,like Healers or Tanks.
In addition to the game’s fundamental flaws, it also had the poor luck of releasing in May 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. By October of that year, Amazon shut the game down and even refunded all purchases, refocusing their video game development on the 2021 MMORPGNew World, which has seen a much better lifespan as of 2024.
Genre
Shooter, RPG
Sadly for those who were charmed bySecond Wave, the game never made it out of Early Access before it was taken off the Steam store. The hero-based MOBAfeatured unique anime-inspired 3D characters, with three game modes including a turf war, a three-way team brawl, and a capture-the-flag-like game where players must keep control of stones.
In addition to the unique art style,Second Waveincluded customizable skins and even voice lines for its characters, and its reviews were fairly positive. Sadly, many players cited its expensive micro-transactions and technical difficulties as part of the reason its cancellation came as no surprise, even if there was maybe a chance for it to get better after leaving Early Access.
Battlebornwas an unlucky hero shooter given the fact it was released the same month as the highly-anticipatedOverwatch. As a result, the game barely had the opportunity to raise an audience, despite having some cool mechanics carried over from MOBA titles, involving leveling up characters mid-match and bringing different item loadouts into each battle.
Surprisingly, the game’s servers stayed online for several years despite a declining player base shortly after launch. The server shutdown took place in January 2021, though some fans have attempted to revive the game through a player-made remake,Battleborn Reborn, which revived its single-player mode with hopes to someday incorporate the online PvP modes.
Shooter
Don’t let appearances be deceptive. Although gamers can go to the Steam store right now and downloadPWND, the game’s servers have been shut down since 2022. It’s a surprising fate for the video game leg of Skydance Interactive,the media company behindMission: ImpossibleandTop Gun: Maverick, but sadly, good reviews couldn’t save this doomed 2018 hero shooter.
Even though its roster only consisted of five playable characters,PWNDcouldn’t sustain a user base even after switching to free-to-play in less than a year. Its failure could possibly be attributed to the gimmick of having to victory dance (or, “PWN”) over players after killing them, which even fans who loved the game felt sick of after only a short while of playing.
Lemnis Gatehad a lot going for itwhen it was first released in 2021. The game takes a different approach to arena-based hero shooters by incorporating a time loop mechanic, in which teams cycle between players completing the same objectives in a certain amount of time, with the ability to aid a teammate’s future attempts through strategic puzzle-solving.
Despite positive reviews for its ingenuity,Lemnis Gatedisappointed sales expectations and failed to keep up a steady player base, shutting down servers in 2023. The developers didn’t even answer fans' pleas for local multiplayer servers to stay online, but at the end of the day, it just became another remnant of a changing industry ruled by several big multiplayer games.
Rocket Arenawas released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2020, introducing an all-new hero shooter to the gaming industry in which characters wield rocket launchers in 3v3 deathmatch or capture the flag modes. It even had cross-platform play enabled from the get-go upon release, but that wasn’t enough to convince gamers to play it after a few seasons.
Development of future updates forRocket Arenaofficially ceased in late 2023, and the game’s servers were shut down in 2024. It’s a disappointing fate for a game that was reportedly easy to learn and fun to play, but just sadly didn’t have enough content to rope in gamers who were more than satisfied with other successful hero shooters.
Even hardcore fans of the hero shooter genre may have never heard ofRenaissance Heroes,which was originally released for the PC in 2013. Sadly, the game’s roster of original heroes just simply wasn’t charismatic enough to attract much of an audience to this 16th-century-based FPS with deathmatch and dueling modes.
The game’s lifespan didn’t even last until the end of 2013, with servers being shut down by the end of that summer. It’s a mystery why the game never got any traction, considering reviews were complimentary of its graphics and gameplay. Alas, in a gaming industry struggling to remain diverse, a title with the word “Renaissance” in the title probably didn’t lure in young gamers.
