Pretty quickly people figured out the optimal way to play was to ignore disguises, rush the rooms, and just win fights with movement tech and aim skill. Tripwire spent the entire lifespan of the game trying to fix that, but the people who were turned away by that never came back, and the FPS-heads that liked that playstyle were upset that their playstyle was getting "nerfed."
This is 100% the points that I was going to make. Scott says "it doesn't matter if your Shroud", the people in this game were better than Shroud (in this particular game). They would just jump across the map not caring who saw them, and when you did shoot them, that was the last shot you got on them. They'd whip around and melt you, then go jumping off again through the map.
Exactly, as a former 50%wr sweat the game just couldn't get the balance right. I think they were a bit too late implementing private matches too. The biggest issue for me at least in the early days was grabbing the briefcase to end the game felt terrible. It was essentially just giving away who you were and giving the ace a free charged shot. Also some small things like progression outside of cosmetics was lacking for a long time.
The other big problem it had was a simple lack of awareness or good marketing. The only visibility this game really got was from a bunch of fed up DBD youtubers who jumped on it for a bit but mostly stuck to their core game. So the vast majority of people aware of this game were DBD players, who may or may not actually be interested in a game like this.
People find a way to ruin everything. Assassin's Creed Brothethood multiplayer used to be a stealth game until people realized that if they ran everywhere, their killers would be forced to have low kill points because it was impossible to kill them while walking stealthily, which was the only way to get good amount of points.. It ruined the fun. Plus most people just dislike stealth and would rather run around and get low scores because they're too impatient
@@Stogiewise If people dislike stealth, why are they coming to a game advertised as a social stealth shooter? There are many, many shooter games they can play with little to no stealth elements whatsoever. That's like going to a death metal concert and then bitching about it being loud
@@greeneggsnspam2111 I know. it's terrible to watch and play like this with these people. It used to be my favourite multiplayer at the time I have over 1000 hours on AC Brotherhood on steam so like 700+ of those are online and I have more on PS3 when it originally launched and when it started it was lovely to play, then it sucked within the same year, then only the real fans stayed while the "roofers" (how we used to call them because they only played the game on the rooftops) left to play AC Revelations and so on. By the time of AC3 the game was unplayable online.and I thought the game healed finally but there were some real fans that stayed and simply prefered the running around playstyle and just the presence of one of these in a lobby of 8 will ruin the experience especially if they are good players
Because it was sold as something akin to the old Assassin's Creed multiplayer kind of experience, with you having to play the part of an npc to avoid death; but pretty quickly devolved into a basic FPS full of annoying jump-shotting.
Exactly. Nothing will ever beat Assassin's Creed Brotherhood multiplayer and even that game's multiplayer was dead a bit after release. It still has some players even 14 years later but quickly died at the time and that was assassin's Creed, one of the most popular franchises at the time. This just suffered from the same fate The Ship did (which was still a better version of this game). It's a very niche stealth game which many people hate stealth, and it doesn't have the same popularity as AC or the proper marketing and hook value
@@Stogiewise The problem is Brotherhood had the same problem in a massive way too. May game-modes were dominated by people just jumping around rooftops because they could get to where they needed to go quickly without risking high point stealth kills on themselves. I played relatively recently and this is still a major problem, which pushed me and others away. Feels bad, I loved when everyone was trying to play stealthily in the earlier period of the game.
@@xSolBadguy It wasn't so bad in that game because people running around on rooftops could be countered by doing stealthy kills. Even if they were your target, you had stealthy ways to kill them, and then you'd get a ton of points compared to them. Often times i would win games where people were shooting each other on the rooftops with like 10+ kills by only getting a single kill but with perfect stealth using poison and various other bonuses.
As others have said, its a stealth game where the META was to go guns blazing. The longer you take to gear up/find resources the weaker you are. Its like the time constraint killers face in DBD. Game was at its best when everyone was playing stealth and you got some truly peak stealth kills. But the sweats showed up and made it unfun so people just left.
They did patch the game shortly after release to punish players going guns blazing, but I think that actually hurt the game more than helped it as it made all those players leave.
@@johnc8383 "shortly" after released is not correct. The heat system came VERY late (once the game was averaging ~100 players on steam), and my understanding was its first iteration was not punishing at all.
The game was sold as an interesting stealth based game but when I played it every match boiled down to people playing it as a death match game and being rewarded for it and the devs took way too long to start address it
Reasons: 1. Not F2P on an already niche market (Spy vs Spy) was bound to have little players from the get go. 2.The FPS element clashed with the majority of the players, some embracing it and going full running and gunning, to others downright hating it and leaving. 3. Little players means not SBMM, and level 600 players with hundreds of game hours going against beginners. You can either git gud and spend hours just to fend against the pros or leave for a friendlier game. Ultimately, this cannibalises the player base, which is already small. 4. Lastly, the game as it is becomes repetitive very quickly. The number of agents available is not big compared to other games, and the maps (which are not many) only suffer small variations each game. I'm having a blast rn playing Deceive inc and will continue to play it, such a shame that it didn't work in the end.
I don't understand when you along with other people give one of the reasons as being repetitive. Do you not understand dbd is repetitive too? Which means that's not a valid reason.
@@sujiiyt DBD has a high count of different killers and hundreds of perks for different gameplay and they create new ones very frequently, not to mention all the maps and variations. Deceive only has 11 playable characters and 5 maps. All online games get repetitive, the point is how soon
@@purplejinxer3478 Bro, you're delusional lol dbd is like that now AFTER 9 YEARS. It was literally the same when it first came out. So if you're gonna have a debate, actually make valid arguments. Not act like dbd has always had so many killers and perks.
Game dev here (tho not a big credentials one yet, but have talked with people who know better) In the current gaming market, small indie Multiplayer-only PVP games that don't pop off insanely hard are just doomed to die, its just not a viable model. If you don't have a big enough initial burst of players to support losing 90%+ of them and still have a strong player count than the math just doesn't pan out. Especially if they don't have some sort of grind + progression. Deceive Inc is not alone in this, plenty of good games have had this happen recently: Gigantic Rampage Edition Exoprimal Deceive Inc Killer Klowns from Outer Space and other "DBD competitors"
@@The_B_Button TCM does fit the description yes. DBD came out a long time ago before this really became a rule, its more of a recent thing in the last few years at least.
Scott being only ever deeply into multiplayer games with really fuckin obnoxious metas and wide gaps between casuals and tryhards becomes more and more true every day.
I remember seeing you stream this game and got super hyped to try it, picked it up and played the tutorial and then waited in que for 20 mins didn't find a match and never launched the game again. Unfortunate because it looked like a ton of fun.
my more overarching games industry thoughts: the absolute power of mainstays like COD and Fortnite, along with their very money and time predatory battle pass systems (hell even DBD's), means that a lot of folks kinda fall into a sunken time cost fallacy with multiplayer video games, and end up not branching out much or not sticking with those games regardless of their mechanics. it's just really hard to keep multiplayer games going, splitgate is another example for me of a mechanically strong game that just petered out, since it's so hard to maintain space in the FPS/multiplayer community
splitgate had an intensely high skill ceiling where even if you were moderately proficient, youd get dogwalked by someone that was actually good. for me, it was reminiscent of rocket league. my friends and i were better than average at the start of the game's lifecycle but within a year, we got outclassed by all the movement tech people refined.
splitgate was fun to mess around with but i didn't see that one running for very long. it was "halo but portal" and that was cool for a while, but it was just so content-dry after the first couple days with it. you try all the gamemodes and you see all the maps, and then you're left with playing splitgate, which *is* fun, but with no clear sense of progression its pretty meaningless. the worst thing about splitgate for me: they didn't have their own art style, and when they weren't just ripping off HALO, they had no sense of direction. first battlepass had HALO ripoff skins and then a fur suit and a smelly miner man.
I think it had to do with marketing, Tripwire really did absolutely nothing for this game marketing-wise. I learned about it from you, which is why I bought it. But I think just sheer lack of exposure did it in.
Agreed. Watching Scott's video really got me interested in the game, but I have never heard of this game until now. Marketing is important for garnering a playerbase to grow, especially if it's going to be online.
At the end of the day, Scott’s job is to stream his main game which is DbD. As the previous comment mentioned, it’s not sustainable to just keep not streaming your main game. It’s novel for a bit but if you are variety swapping back and forth between games then your retention of viewers drops drastically.
It’s very hard. Plus you can spend the entire game being really sneaky and methodical, only to get shot and killed in the back at the end. Essentially, too much downtime and not enough reward.
i literally let out an audible "oh nooo" seeing the thumbnail.... I loved when you streamed this game actually it was so fun, heartbreaking to hear the company shut down...
from what a friend who played it more then me said: "They started off pretty strong but lost momentum because it eventually became difficult gaining/retaining new players. Didnt have a solid lobby ranking to prevent experience players steam rolling new players. Then it got flooded with a bunch of hackers and players ignoring the entire purpose of the game and just started headhunting other players to lobby wipe" I wonder if going free to play might have saved the game, since it would have been so much more acceseble and shareble. then they could have gotten the money from cool cosmetics/battle pass things.
I literally never heard of a single other person playing this outside of otz I literally bought this game played it like twice and forgot I had it until the moment you posted this video Marketing is 10000x more important for a multiplayer game than singleplayer, many games can become big hits years after release but if a multiplayer game launches with long queue times and limited players it's not even going to last a month
They wasted all their time trying to appeal to people who didn’t like what they made. They kept trying to force the game to be stealthy to appease these people, meanwhile these people didn’t play the game.
@Summonick2 yea because ppl were literally throwing stealth out the window, the game is about stealth from a fundamental level, that's the whole point of the game and it's systems, if ppl actually played the game stealthy like it's supposed to be, the players would of kept playing. People loved what they made, but the fun is kinda ruined when ppl literally ignore all the mechanics in the game that existed and went guns blazing. It renders a massive amount of work the devs did to make the core mechanics of the game null and void it was a stealth game not an fps death match, you want that play games like CoD and Battlefield.
I wouldn’t blame people for not playing things as they’re ‘supposed to be played’. I think the devs, while they put love and care into the game, are responsible for not making those strategies less encouraged and making stealth more encouraged.
As a former moderator for their official Discord, people just found the optimal way to play and it made it so unfun for new players, nearly impossible. In addition, their Discord server gave the game a bad taste. Alienated a lot of people.
@rouxix was a year ago but some "presumably fat person" was going on about inclusiveness for the "plus size minority" that it would be cool to have a fat charecter as an operator. So I responded with "as a fat person myself I doubt a top level international spy would be fat, this game involves alot of sprinting and acrobatics. If they could already do that they wouldn't be fat. Either lean or muscular" then one of the moderators beaned me without warning. I didn't even curse or anything like that.
It reached a point that the 30 players that are playing are 3 stacks of people who played a game for tons of hours and for a game like this that is meant to be more casual. Finding a game by yourself is impossible due to that.
Sucks to see genuinely interesting and unique games get shut down because nobody played them. Felt that way with Spellbreak, I didn't go crazy into it but it was so fun and had such a different style to any other "haha military br game"
I would say a part of its failure, is the matchmaking. It took a bit to get into matches AND there seemed to be NO MMR. I swear I would get a single chip and all 3 vaults were opened. I felt like I was going against world master players most of the time. I went weeks without winning a single game.
I think they designed their stealth game like a battle royale out of fear that an indie stealth game wouldnt sell enough. I was looking forward to competitive hitman/splinter cell.
Dead by Daylight changed from one of immersion to more of a fast-paced chase style of game. To DBD's benefit, the community enjoyed the looping and chase elements of DBD more than the stealth horror element it was originally meant to be. Deceive, on the other hand, had players that enjoyed the stealthy disguised aspect as it was the game's main selling point in marketing. The more the gameplay became optimized, the more the gameplay became akin to any other fps game. Most players that played this game did not enjoy or want to play that style of game in this genre. When a game doesn't have the framework to keep the structure of how it is intended to be played together, it generally crumbles.
PVP live service game published by Tripwire. Their dev/publishing portfolio of the past 10 years has been extremely poor which is why I avoided it, I know better than to buy into a modern tripwire title. Extremely charming title though, sad it ended up like this.
No one played it how it was supposed to be played after the first few days, a stealth, spy game where everyone ran around like it’s cod. Also the balancing was bad, playing everything perfectly just to get 1 tapped by an ace, 2 tapped by immortal Chavez or ran circles around by squire at the end was so demoralising😭 larcin was the only one who really fit the game but was terrible for most of its lifespan.
Simple question for Scott why did YOU stop playing if it was so fun? Not a smart ass comment just stating what caused you to stop probably stopped a lot of others. Assuming you didn’t think it was profitable to stream a lot of others probably felt the same, without streamers playing it people forgot about it
@ that’s what I’m saying, it was booming because of streamers I think you, Dowsey and otz all swapped… once streaming stopped the hype for the game couldn’t sustain itself. I absolutely don’t blame you you can’t take a financial hit. We’ll see more of these one month wonders I’m guessing many more
The nerfs to the fun stealth/disruption classes (Larcin invis&pickpocket and Madame Xui teleport) combined with the buffs to tracking made it hard to have unique gameplay moments like on launch. If you know where an enemy is because of X ability, no reason not to drop stealth immediately. The heal-and-reload-and-disguise-on-kill change that came later just amplified the issue instead of fixing it.
@@elitechaz8440 that one was kinda on you the PS4 and xbone are not supported anymore, it's a sad truth. Only consoles for games are current gen, so PS5 xbsx
I'd imagine there is kinda a negative feedback loop to it as well. Low player count makes people not want to play, because it'll take a long time to que and match quality will be horrible. Which in turn makes less people play, and so on.
this game was so amazing man. for a few months it became me and my friend's go-to when dbd wasn't enjoyable to us, and I enjoyed the hell out of it and only stopped playing when it lost playerbase
You love the game Scott, but you never talk about it as far as I am aware. I only know if this game because if Otz, and even he didnt make much content on it outside of clips showing up in weekly conpilations.
Sweats abused broken weapons and headshots, particularly Chavez with his 35/70HS damage weapon (against 100hp default) and an invuln power. They nerfed the stealth characters abilities while buffing the annoying aggressive stuff. (Larcin stealth lasts shorter, body camping was an issue for too long in multiplayer.) Every change encouraged more fights and less spy gameplay (wait 3 minutes to print out an access card to the final vault, but everyone can see and hear it printing). The playerbase was so small, you would find the exact same people (back to back), and if you didn't have fun against them last match, you were literally better off quitting and re-queueing or hard shutting off the game. Even then, the marketing itself was probably the worst thing. No one knew of the game, so no one got it. Streamers nowadays are often the best form of marketing, but streamers were too easily stream-sniped, and even once they added anonymous features, the playerbase was so small you could still know if you are in the same lobby and streamsnipe.
My best guess is the same reason a lot of fun indie projects like this fail: Outreach/Marketing. Outside of the few dbd content creators covering it, which performed poorly because content creators focusing on a single game like dbd always get WAY less viewership on variety content, you really didnt see it anywhere. It's also a game that at least seems more fun to watch than actually learn how to play. Most players queued for 2-3 matches, died within 5 minutes after having no idea how to play then either refunded or never launched it again
There are a LOT of games like this, and as someone who's played multiple, although the initial problems that lead to decline varies massively, I can say with 100% confidence that the reason so many multiplayer matchmaking games like this struggles is because... Once playerbase starts dying for any number of reasons, either your queues increase to massive degrees or you are going against people with 100s or 1000s of hours as a completely new player. This then makes more and more people leave, even the people that absolutely LOVE the game, because it's just not worth 30+ minute queues for them, and new players don't want to go against sweats every match. I tried Deceive inc, kept going against insanely high level players as one of the only level 1's, literally most people would have a crazy amount of playtime, I would've continue if it wasn't so buggy for me, but even then I would've dropped it quickly regardless. Another example is Home Sweet Home Survive (aka HSHH), I LOVED that game so much, it was an incredibly fun dbd-like game that just felt more unique than many others. But queue times could be anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour, and if it's quicker then you best believe you're going against a tryhard who knows every mechanic of the game. Hackers were also a problem, which was part of why playerbase dropped, but, in the end, I dropped it because the queue times were too obnoxious. Imagine if DBD had 30-60+ minute matchmaking times at all times, the game would die so fast.
It's very much likely the change in the way people play games. This game was a multiplayer shooter, which already loses all the players that just don't like to be competitive. Then you have "stealth" mechanics in this game, but they are not the kind of stealth you would have in Hitman or Assassins Creed, because you can't easily take people down. This game just kind of created it's own way how you are supposed to play the game, but it doesn't fit any of the common playstyles anymore. People in shooters either want to have the action or the stealth takedowns, but here you have stealth movement, with environmental awareness and quick consequential shooting action. The playerbase just adapted, to play the game the way they would think is fun and it just didn't really keep the unique elements anymore and then you gotta ask yourself, why play a game with limits to your playstyle, than playing a game that fully supports your style. Gamers nowadays just don't play that much for immersion and enjoying the experience anymore. They don't want to read lore or generally long texts, if something is skippable they skip. Slow stealth movement is way too boring for most players. I mean DbD for example works perfectly with stealth and it is a mechanic of the game, the fact that walking doesn't leave scratch marks, but long time players will practically run through the whole match, because most people don't want to move slowly and take their time. Social Media, RUclips Shorts, TikTok; It all works for you to spend only a small time on one thing and then get some new input. This practically trains people to have short attention spans, with the least amount of input from themselves to get more content. Read a long book to learn about this epic story? Nah, why do that if you can just watch some short funny TikToks; Watch this hour long stream of my favorite streamer? Better go to the clip channel to watch the funniest moments in short clips and the best of it, you can get thousands of the best parts in short clips and if you get bored just switch to something else. A game about strategy, environmental awareness and slow well chosen movement is just not working for peoples short attention spans. Go back to the time when playing a videogame and reading was practically the same and people would have praised Deceive Inc. for the fast action and quick matches.
There was absolutely 0 marketing for this game. The only people I know that played it were DBD streamers, who people tend to not watch if they aren't playing DBD.
I never played it but I could tell that the game definitely had elbow grease behind its creation and it is a real shame that something unique like this just fades out.
I've had a lot of fun playing with a private lobby where we all play on personalized rules, public lobbies were a massive mixed bag for me since I'm bad at shooters.
Tbh I mostly forgot about it - I barely ever saw any advertising of it, and honestly didn't even realise it existed. It seemed somewhat interesting, but it wasn't something that stuck in my mind. Honestly, it's biggest flaw, imo, was that it was good without being great - it had an interesting premise, but failed to hook people. Similar to Spellbound, a game I absolutely loved, and that died as well.
Basically: launch game, wait ~20 minutes for a match to start with a half full lobby, 2 minutes into match 2 vault codes already open, if you grab the briefcase you get 1 tapped by an Ace, if someone else grabs it they go ultra instinct and you'll at most get pot shots while they laser your head from 50m away. Sold as a spy game, played like TDM w/objectives
I started playing aggressively, like you speak of, but if you’re good it didn’t matter, I won like 90% of my games. I had friends that also played that way and got similar results, so at least anecdotally playing aggro did not mean that you died more if you were a good shooter player.
This and hunt showdown are two games that are so incredibly good but I cannot convince my friends to step away from COD, Apex, Fortnite etc to play. So frustrating.
@ I’m curious as well. I know some ppl complained about the ghost face skin. Which sure if you have a problem with them bringing licensed content into the game that’s fair but has nothing to do with gameplay. And some ppl thought bounty clash ruined the spirit of hunt, but it has the same core mechanics and deliberate gunplay that make hunt what it is, just compressed to eliminate all the running around in bounty hunt. Still nothing like cod. So yeah not sure what they mean. Guess we’ll see.
Not many content creators played this after a while. Providing a rank system would have placed a competitive edge which would have also incentivized playing this game. I loved this game and I never got a single OCE player in my lobbies which meant I was in ping disadvantage for the most part but it was still so much fun. Praying for a miracle too.
I still love this game and play it every few days with my duo, it is genuinely unjust that this game is not succeeding. The meta absolutely supports the intended playstyle now and my friend and I have a disgusting winrate playing to punish careless agents.
I adored this game, so, so, so sad to see it never able to get the foothold it deserved. The biggest issue was that rushing and ignoring stealth was pretty optimal for a while, which resulted in people bouncing off of it. but for it to have gone from 8k concurrent players to this is just shocking. And the game is so filled with love. I can only hope Tripwire does more than just keep the game on life support, even with the dev team gone, but I don't have much hope. Farewell, deceive inc. . . you were too good for this shitty industry.
In my opinion you almost hit the nail on the head, its a fun game with interesting mechanics and satisfying shooting and it was cheap, but not free. Especially if you are trying to get other friends to play even a low barrier. Its a similar situation as to what happened to Gotham city imposters where due to the experimental gameplay people couldn't afford to buy a game that might look fun in videos but isn't when they play it.
Rip game. Honestly the most impressive aspect of the game was that it was actually hard to tell if someone was an NPC or not. You would think NPC's would act very statically but it was genuinely pretty hard to tell
Yeah and they improved a ton too, I came back to the game recently and had quite a few moment where I shot someone that I 100% thought was a player when it wasn't. And I'm definetly not the kind to me trigger happy
"Servers and matching will remain up for the foreseeable future, and we are exploring how to keep the game available to its fans long term, but have no announcements to make on that today" Never played this game - it's just not my kind of thing, but this line at the end of studio shutdown notification made me go "woah, they really care". Wish more game studios were like this. They couldn't make this game pop and even though they can't keep working on it they don't want it to just disappear (unlike other companies that just pull the plug and game you own is no longer available to you despite having a perfectly functional offline mode). I hope they succeed at this and somehow let the community host private servers.
As someone who dropped off a short time after they added Octo and has been on and off ever since, I was wondering why they so quickly decided to pull the "deep lore character" card with releasing Knight and not saving her for further down the road In retrospect, I'm glad they did, seeing as we've unfortunately reached the end of the road
Seeing people just sprinting down hallways wanting people to shoot them and knowing I couldn't made it unfun. The best players would get shot at first but be able to hide and let ai damage you in return and finish you off. Stealth wasn't a thing.
I saw a youtube video recently about how character design sells games and I think it applies here. DBD has a cast of recognizable killers/survivors and plenty of licensed characters while deceive inc has some ok designs but nothing that really grabs people.
1. The gimmick of stealth was broken at the start so run and gun was optimal, 2. it wasn’t free and competing with (and this is gonna sound crazy) hunt showdown in the same niche of extraction shooter with an objective to steal. It was essentially family friendly hunt showdown even with the same mechanic of the team with the objective gets wallhacks. If it marketed better and was free to play it would of had a better lifespan
In every PvP game, with or without SBMM, there will be a crowd of people who try to win as much as possible and optimize their playstyle to the point no one else has fun. The devs have to either immediately nip these players in the butt and and say "we dont want to support these playstyles, this is supposed to be a more casual-friendly game" or immediately support these players and say "we encourage the more competitive playstyle and will continue to support it as the game evolves over time." From what ive seen the devs were too slow to respond, and the casual players immediately left as the more competitive players took over, and when they did finally respond they started nerfing the competitive playstyle in hopes of bringing the more casual playerbase back but at that point the damage was done and all they did was push more people away from their game who actually enjoyed a more TDM playstyle. Maybe I'm wrong but fans of the game and people who kept up with it can correct me.
Nah you nailed it. I'm a casual that left with the first wave cause of the "death match" meta, and I recently launched the game again and honestly the changes they made to punish that are awesome, but now only the tryhard players are left so I get outguned nontheless. If the game had first released as it is currently I could honestly see it stand a chance.
I loved this game on release. Very cool concept, put a good bit of hours into it with some friends. However, the game itself is kind of intimidating to learn, and learning how to deal with each character on top of figuring out the best way to get into restricted areas AND be able to respond properly when getting shot (aka not whiffing the entire mag because I suck ass) was just a bit much for me. I found myself just getting killed for playing slow, and learning almost nothing each attempt because sometimes I would get into somewhere fine, and other times I would get shot before I even got to the door. I would hit my A key slightly wrong or something and now I have this team of level 200 turbo nerds preparing a 3-pronged instakill before I even recognize who's who. Then my teammates have to either fight them and die trying, revive me and die trying, or just accept that I'm dead and I will now be watching the match for the next 5-10 minutes. Maybe I just got some really unlucky matchmaking, but almost every match I played was either A: Almost nothing happened, we fought maybe one person and just left with the briefcase for free, or B: We run into one team that hard camps a particular vault and steamrolls us as soon as we even THINK about entering the front door. The game became way less of an interesting stealth PvP game and way more of a PvP FPS but you don't know who the enemies are. The enemies know who YOU are though because they have way more experience than you and can catch the most minute mistakes. If I was doing something obviously weird and then died, that would make sense, and that did happen many times. However, half the time I would just be WALKING and get slaughtered. Maybe a certain character had some kind of ability to tell who I was every time, but the game just seemed plagued by sweatlords and I didn't feel rewarded for throwing my hat into the ring. Maybe I just suck (I do), but it never struck me as a fun experience. I was just constantly stressed, eyeing every NPC like a paranoid schizo until eventually I got shit on.
The big issue is being super aggressive wasn't an issue for Yu-mi and her best weapon, so it completely bypassed the stealth bit. It was a great game and I really enjoyed it, but I also think it suffered from the solo player being at a huge disadvantage with no revives, and the simple fact is most gamers are playing multiplayer solo. If there was a self-revive system, or something similar, that may have helped as well.
Not enough advertisement and too much shooting and not enough actual stealth gameplay which the devs didn’t know how to handle. Was one of the most fun with games I have had in years. Sadly it turned to the bad
When it doesn't matter how good I am at all the other otherwise fun elements of the game because the other players will always kill me even if I start with a height/range/surprise advantage, since they're getting consistent headshots while jumping around like a flea on cocaine, I have no reason to play because I'm never going to win when it comes to a shootout. That one aspect of the game has been overshadowing all the other cool parts of the intended game flow and the fun has evaporated. Sure it's a skill issue but if that one skill trumps all others then it's really no different from all the other shooters I passed over to play Deceive Inc. instead because I thought it had more going on.
This is definetly my take away too. I loved the game tried it on release and loved it but I quickly found that the "skill gap" was really frustrating. I'm just not that good at gunfights and that's the reason I left the first time, and it almost happened again when I came back around recently...
Simple: It became death match only and 3rd partying made stealth awful. If you went around guns blazing than losses and wins were quick, if you went stealth you'd be open to be 3rd party whenever you inevitably hit a shootout, which, win or lose would mean you'd die to the 3rd party strat. They also made some massive mistakes with say Larcin's invis which was so strong you had effectively a free escape, with other characters having kits that made stalling out fights very easy which made 3rd partying even worse. In essence the best characters are the ones where you can two tap someone with minimal risk and not characters who have to give up a lot to survive a fight, because not only did you have to win it you had to win it in record time or else anything you'd get from the fight would be wasted. Stealth isn't rewarding, fights are barely rewarding so the only winning move is not to play for a lot of people. This wasn't helped by the level up and unlock systems which led to you having to waste a BUNCH of time on a character to get the gun you want but because dupes per team weren't allowed you'd inevitably be forced to use a character you don't like / don't know without the necessary unlocks that makes the character OP ala Prince's unsilenced gun being his best but also only available through grinding, same with Chavez.
There’s like 5-7 games that are taking up 90% of the entire industry’s player base. Multiplayer games as a whole are just have too much competition I feel
You are forgetting a major factor, the Luck variable. Sometimes luck is a reason for people success plus all the other things you mentioned. Also this game don't have licences (yes believe it or not they are important) a spy game could have James bond. Jason born, Kingsman (already have the humor) gaming is a very competitive space
Could say the same thing for vhs, unfortunately a few poor upper-management decisions early on kills the player base who never usually return because it’s not their favorite franchise (dbd, smash, league, etc.)
one thing youre forgetting is the players who quit bc of people who just shot every NPC (before the whole heat system was added) never came back, since that huge design flaw was in the game to begin with, and people just played TDM, it lost a lot of players.
Because multiplayer only games in an already highly competitive market continue to lead to these topical games that come and fade in an instance, leaving you with a digital paperweight.
Pretty quickly people figured out the optimal way to play was to ignore disguises, rush the rooms, and just win fights with movement tech and aim skill. Tripwire spent the entire lifespan of the game trying to fix that, but the people who were turned away by that never came back, and the FPS-heads that liked that playstyle were upset that their playstyle was getting "nerfed."
This is 100% the points that I was going to make. Scott says "it doesn't matter if your Shroud", the people in this game were better than Shroud (in this particular game). They would just jump across the map not caring who saw them, and when you did shoot them, that was the last shot you got on them. They'd whip around and melt you, then go jumping off again through the map.
Exactly, as a former 50%wr sweat the game just couldn't get the balance right. I think they were a bit too late implementing private matches too. The biggest issue for me at least in the early days was grabbing the briefcase to end the game felt terrible. It was essentially just giving away who you were and giving the ace a free charged shot. Also some small things like progression outside of cosmetics was lacking for a long time.
To add to this I was also really put off by the controller aim assist as a pc player, It felt extremely overturned.
That sounds pretty similar to a certain other game as of late lmao
The other big problem it had was a simple lack of awareness or good marketing. The only visibility this game really got was from a bunch of fed up DBD youtubers who jumped on it for a bit but mostly stuck to their core game. So the vast majority of people aware of this game were DBD players, who may or may not actually be interested in a game like this.
Me and my friends stopped playing it because people wouldn’t be sneaky they’d just shoot everyone LOL
got very annoying
People find a way to ruin everything. Assassin's Creed Brothethood multiplayer used to be a stealth game until people realized that if they ran everywhere, their killers would be forced to have low kill points because it was impossible to kill them while walking stealthily, which was the only way to get good amount of points.. It ruined the fun. Plus most people just dislike stealth and would rather run around and get low scores because they're too impatient
@@Stogiewise If people dislike stealth, why are they coming to a game advertised as a social stealth shooter? There are many, many shooter games they can play with little to no stealth elements whatsoever. That's like going to a death metal concert and then bitching about it being loud
@@greeneggsnspam2111 I know. it's terrible to watch and play like this with these people. It used to be my favourite multiplayer at the time I have over 1000 hours on AC Brotherhood on steam so like 700+ of those are online and I have more on PS3 when it originally launched and when it started it was lovely to play, then it sucked within the same year, then only the real fans stayed while the "roofers" (how we used to call them because they only played the game on the rooftops) left to play AC Revelations and so on. By the time of AC3 the game was unplayable online.and I thought the game healed finally but there were some real fans that stayed and simply prefered the running around playstyle and just the presence of one of these in a lobby of 8 will ruin the experience especially if they are good players
Because it was sold as something akin to the old Assassin's Creed multiplayer kind of experience, with you having to play the part of an npc to avoid death; but pretty quickly devolved into a basic FPS full of annoying jump-shotting.
Exactly. Nothing will ever beat Assassin's Creed Brotherhood multiplayer and even that game's multiplayer was dead a bit after release. It still has some players even 14 years later but quickly died at the time and that was assassin's Creed, one of the most popular franchises at the time. This just suffered from the same fate The Ship did (which was still a better version of this game). It's a very niche stealth game which many people hate stealth, and it doesn't have the same popularity as AC or the proper marketing and hook value
@@Stogiewise The problem is Brotherhood had the same problem in a massive way too. May game-modes were dominated by people just jumping around rooftops because they could get to where they needed to go quickly without risking high point stealth kills on themselves. I played relatively recently and this is still a major problem, which pushed me and others away. Feels bad, I loved when everyone was trying to play stealthily in the earlier period of the game.
@@xSolBadguy It wasn't so bad in that game because people running around on rooftops could be countered by doing stealthy kills. Even if they were your target, you had stealthy ways to kill them, and then you'd get a ton of points compared to them. Often times i would win games where people were shooting each other on the rooftops with like 10+ kills by only getting a single kill but with perfect stealth using poison and various other bonuses.
@@Stogiewise Black Flag multiplayer was hella fun too. No game has replicated it.
I wish we could get an assassin's creed multiplayer-like with devs that understand the desire for stealth games isn't very large
As others have said, its a stealth game where the META was to go guns blazing. The longer you take to gear up/find resources the weaker you are. Its like the time constraint killers face in DBD. Game was at its best when everyone was playing stealth and you got some truly peak stealth kills. But the sweats showed up and made it unfun so people just left.
They did patch the game shortly after release to punish players going guns blazing, but I think that actually hurt the game more than helped it as it made all those players leave.
@@johnc8383 "shortly" after released is not correct. The heat system came VERY late (once the game was averaging ~100 players on steam), and my understanding was its first iteration was not punishing at all.
The game was sold as an interesting stealth based game but when I played it every match boiled down to people playing it as a death match game and being rewarded for it and the devs took way too long to start address it
Reasons:
1. Not F2P on an already niche market (Spy vs Spy) was bound to have little players from the get go.
2.The FPS element clashed with the majority of the players, some embracing it and going full running and gunning, to others downright hating it and leaving.
3. Little players means not SBMM, and level 600 players with hundreds of game hours going against beginners. You can either git gud and spend hours just to fend against the pros or leave for a friendlier game. Ultimately, this cannibalises the player base, which is already small.
4. Lastly, the game as it is becomes repetitive very quickly. The number of agents available is not big compared to other games, and the maps (which are not many) only suffer small variations each game.
I'm having a blast rn playing Deceive inc and will continue to play it, such a shame that it didn't work in the end.
I don't understand when you along with other people give one of the reasons as being repetitive. Do you not understand dbd is repetitive too? Which means that's not a valid reason.
@@sujiiyt DBD has a high count of different killers and hundreds of perks for different gameplay and they create new ones very frequently, not to mention all the maps and variations. Deceive only has 11 playable characters and 5 maps. All online games get repetitive, the point is how soon
@@purplejinxer3478 Bro, you're delusional lol dbd is like that now AFTER 9 YEARS. It was literally the same when it first came out. So if you're gonna have a debate, actually make valid arguments. Not act like dbd has always had so many killers and perks.
@@sujiiyt Just my opinion, you have yours
Repetitiveness is a big one. I left the game after realizing that most matches tend to go down very similarly.
Game dev here (tho not a big credentials one yet, but have talked with people who know better)
In the current gaming market, small indie Multiplayer-only PVP games that don't pop off insanely hard are just doomed to die, its just not a viable model. If you don't have a big enough initial burst of players to support losing 90%+ of them and still have a strong player count than the math just doesn't pan out. Especially if they don't have some sort of grind + progression.
Deceive Inc is not alone in this, plenty of good games have had this happen recently:
Gigantic Rampage Edition
Exoprimal
Deceive Inc
Killer Klowns from Outer Space and other "DBD competitors"
Would TCM work, too? And DBD technically since it was only saved by Myers?
@@The_B_Button TCM does fit the description yes. DBD came out a long time ago before this really became a rule, its more of a recent thing in the last few years at least.
Player base turnied it from a spy game into a FPS game
Scott being only ever deeply into multiplayer games with really fuckin obnoxious metas and wide gaps between casuals and tryhards becomes more and more true every day.
He needs to try Apex Legends next then :)
I remember seeing you stream this game and got super hyped to try it, picked it up and played the tutorial and then waited in que for 20 mins didn't find a match and never launched the game again. Unfortunate because it looked like a ton of fun.
my more overarching games industry thoughts: the absolute power of mainstays like COD and Fortnite, along with their very money and time predatory battle pass systems (hell even DBD's), means that a lot of folks kinda fall into a sunken time cost fallacy with multiplayer video games, and end up not branching out much or not sticking with those games regardless of their mechanics. it's just really hard to keep multiplayer games going, splitgate is another example for me of a mechanically strong game that just petered out, since it's so hard to maintain space in the FPS/multiplayer community
Legit super agree. the only reason fortnite keeps me alot of the time is because of fomo that I'll miss out on the music pass/battle pass stufd
splitgate had an intensely high skill ceiling where even if you were moderately proficient, youd get dogwalked by someone that was actually good.
for me, it was reminiscent of rocket league. my friends and i were better than average at the start of the game's lifecycle but within a year, we got outclassed by all the movement tech people refined.
splitgate died because halo infinite came out right around the same time. why play halo at home when you can have the real thing.
splitgate was fun to mess around with but i didn't see that one running for very long. it was "halo but portal" and that was cool for a while, but it was just so content-dry after the first couple days with it. you try all the gamemodes and you see all the maps, and then you're left with playing splitgate, which *is* fun, but with no clear sense of progression its pretty meaningless.
the worst thing about splitgate for me: they didn't have their own art style, and when they weren't just ripping off HALO, they had no sense of direction. first battlepass had HALO ripoff skins and then a fur suit and a smelly miner man.
@@MasterElite403because splitgate was basically just better halo
I think it had to do with marketing, Tripwire really did absolutely nothing for this game marketing-wise. I learned about it from you, which is why I bought it. But I think just sheer lack of exposure did it in.
Agreed. Watching Scott's video really got me interested in the game, but I have never heard of this game until now. Marketing is important for garnering a playerbase to grow, especially if it's going to be online.
Not even, the competitive players ignoring disguises killed the game.
I didn't even realize Tripwire were the ones that published this game; THERE'S your answer.
Yeah I found it from Otz and Fitzy
Just like what happened with VHS
Why did you stop playing?
The viewership drop was probably not sustainable for Scott compared to playing DBD.
At the end of the day, Scott’s job is to stream his main game which is DbD. As the previous comment mentioned, it’s not sustainable to just keep not streaming your main game. It’s novel for a bit but if you are variety swapping back and forth between games then your retention of viewers drops drastically.
@@JakeobE ok but he said he found it so much fun, so you'd think he'd log (many) hours into it, even playing off-stream.
But he didn't
@@MrDCHunHe has a life too lol. He can't just play games all day. He mostly plays dbd because of that. Idk why you're acting so weird.
@@IreFang because he acts like he knows what this game went through over the last year (he does not)
It’s very hard. Plus you can spend the entire game being really sneaky and methodical, only to get shot and killed in the back at the end. Essentially, too much downtime and not enough reward.
Don't forget to add the long queue times as "downtime".
It reminds me of hunt showdown. Some dude who did nothing the whole game can still win if they shoot you 0.0001 seconds before you can extract
Hunt showdown is a really good game. I appreciate the harsh gameplay and accurate gun mechanics.
@@plague1739but it's not fair, and most people prefer fair fun
i literally let out an audible "oh nooo" seeing the thumbnail.... I loved when you streamed this game actually it was so fun, heartbreaking to hear the company shut down...
from what a friend who played it more then me said:
"They started off pretty strong but lost momentum because it eventually became difficult gaining/retaining new players. Didnt have a solid lobby ranking to prevent experience players steam rolling new players. Then it got flooded with a bunch of hackers and players ignoring the entire purpose of the game and just started headhunting other players to lobby wipe"
I wonder if going free to play might have saved the game, since it would have been so much more acceseble and shareble. then they could have gotten the money from cool cosmetics/battle pass things.
I literally never heard of a single other person playing this outside of otz
I literally bought this game played it like twice and forgot I had it until the moment you posted this video
Marketing is 10000x more important for a multiplayer game than singleplayer, many games can become big hits years after release but if a multiplayer game launches with long queue times and limited players it's not even going to last a month
They updated it to the bitter end too loved the game but ppl didn't play the game like it was supposed to be played and threw stealth out the window
They wasted all their time trying to appeal to people who didn’t like what they made. They kept trying to force the game to be stealthy to appease these people, meanwhile these people didn’t play the game.
@Summonick2 yea because ppl were literally throwing stealth out the window, the game is about stealth from a fundamental level, that's the whole point of the game and it's systems, if ppl actually played the game stealthy like it's supposed to be, the players would of kept playing. People loved what they made, but the fun is kinda ruined when ppl literally ignore all the mechanics in the game that existed and went guns blazing. It renders a massive amount of work the devs did to make the core mechanics of the game null and void it was a stealth game not an fps death match, you want that play games like CoD and Battlefield.
I wouldn’t blame people for not playing things as they’re ‘supposed to be played’. I think the devs, while they put love and care into the game, are responsible for not making those strategies less encouraged and making stealth more encouraged.
As a former moderator for their official Discord, people just found the optimal way to play and it made it so unfun for new players, nearly impossible. In addition, their Discord server gave the game a bad taste. Alienated a lot of people.
I got banned from the discord for saying "a top level international spy probably wouldn't be fat"
@@TheRealLarcin Sounds about right
@@TheRealLarcin This is hilarious please give me some context
@rouxix was a year ago but some "presumably fat person" was going on about inclusiveness for the "plus size minority" that it would be cool to have a fat charecter as an operator. So I responded with "as a fat person myself I doubt a top level international spy would be fat, this game involves alot of sprinting and acrobatics. If they could already do that they wouldn't be fat. Either lean or muscular" then one of the moderators beaned me without warning. I didn't even curse or anything like that.
@@TheRealLarcin This is gold thank you for sharing it
It reached a point that the 30 players that are playing are 3 stacks of people who played a game for tons of hours and for a game like this that is meant to be more casual. Finding a game by yourself is impossible due to that.
i honestly really like deceive inc, it's got an aesthetic that i think it's unique and everything in the game has a charm to it that i love
Sucks to see genuinely interesting and unique games get shut down because nobody played them. Felt that way with Spellbreak, I didn't go crazy into it but it was so fun and had such a different style to any other "haha military br game"
As a person who has only seen clips of the game, I have never had any idea what is happening in said clips.
I would say a part of its failure, is the matchmaking.
It took a bit to get into matches AND there seemed to be NO MMR.
I swear I would get a single chip and all 3 vaults were opened. I felt like I was going against world master players most of the time.
I went weeks without winning a single game.
Same feeling with Knockout City :( that game was sick
I think they designed their stealth game like a battle royale out of fear that an indie stealth game wouldnt sell enough. I was looking forward to competitive hitman/splinter cell.
Its interesting that you say it was fun "until I stopped playing it."
It seems you've answered your own question.
YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED THE SAY THE OBVIOUS PART OUT LOUD!!111
Dead by Daylight changed from one of immersion to more of a fast-paced chase style of game. To DBD's benefit, the community enjoyed the looping and chase elements of DBD more than the stealth horror element it was originally meant to be. Deceive, on the other hand, had players that enjoyed the stealthy disguised aspect as it was the game's main selling point in marketing. The more the gameplay became optimized, the more the gameplay became akin to any other fps game. Most players that played this game did not enjoy or want to play that style of game in this genre. When a game doesn't have the framework to keep the structure of how it is intended to be played together, it generally crumbles.
PVP live service game published by Tripwire. Their dev/publishing portfolio of the past 10 years has been extremely poor which is why I avoided it, I know better than to buy into a modern tripwire title. Extremely charming title though, sad it ended up like this.
No one played it how it was supposed to be played after the first few days, a stealth, spy game where everyone ran around like it’s cod.
Also the balancing was bad, playing everything perfectly just to get 1 tapped by an ace, 2 tapped by immortal Chavez or ran circles around by squire at the end was so demoralising😭 larcin was the only one who really fit the game but was terrible for most of its lifespan.
You forgot about the yu-mi with weapon 3 & healing orb. Plus the boring meta of bounce pad and shield.
Simple question for Scott why did YOU stop playing if it was so fun? Not a smart ass comment just stating what caused you to stop probably stopped a lot of others. Assuming you didn’t think it was profitable to stream a lot of others probably felt the same, without streamers playing it people forgot about it
bc he's a dbd streamer, you cant just switch games and keep the same people
streaming a game with a 200 average playerbase is not a sustainable business model lol
@ that’s what I’m saying, it was booming because of streamers I think you, Dowsey and otz all swapped… once streaming stopped the hype for the game couldn’t sustain itself. I absolutely don’t blame you you can’t take a financial hit. We’ll see more of these one month wonders I’m guessing many more
The nerfs to the fun stealth/disruption classes (Larcin invis&pickpocket and Madame Xui teleport) combined with the buffs to tracking made it hard to have unique gameplay moments like on launch. If you know where an enemy is because of X ability, no reason not to drop stealth immediately. The heal-and-reload-and-disguise-on-kill change that came later just amplified the issue instead of fixing it.
As a person who can’t afford a pc. It needed a console launch tbh. I have so many fiends that would have loved to play it but couldn’t.
Wdym, it's on console since March 2023. The fact that players don't know shows how bad their marketing was 😔
It was on console and it was the most player friendly game for monetization, and you can buy old battle passes
Not on Xbox One or PS4. Wouldn’t let me buy the game unless I had the “required console”
@@elitechaz8440 Get something made in the last decade.
@@elitechaz8440 that one was kinda on you the PS4 and xbone are not supported anymore, it's a sad truth. Only consoles for games are current gen, so PS5 xbsx
I'd imagine there is kinda a negative feedback loop to it as well. Low player count makes people not want to play, because it'll take a long time to que and match quality will be horrible. Which in turn makes less people play, and so on.
It was the comperitive side of people wanting to shoot. It killed the feeling and vibe of the game
this game was so amazing man. for a few months it became me and my friend's go-to when dbd wasn't enjoyable to us, and I enjoyed the hell out of it and only stopped playing when it lost playerbase
You love the game Scott, but you never talk about it as far as I am aware. I only know if this game because if Otz, and even he didnt make much content on it outside of clips showing up in weekly conpilations.
i mean its been effectively dead for a long time. 20-30 average players. this was jusst the "announcement"
Sweats abused broken weapons and headshots, particularly Chavez with his 35/70HS damage weapon (against 100hp default) and an invuln power.
They nerfed the stealth characters abilities while buffing the annoying aggressive stuff. (Larcin stealth lasts shorter, body camping was an issue for too long in multiplayer.)
Every change encouraged more fights and less spy gameplay (wait 3 minutes to print out an access card to the final vault, but everyone can see and hear it printing).
The playerbase was so small, you would find the exact same people (back to back), and if you didn't have fun against them last match, you were literally better off quitting and re-queueing or hard shutting off the game.
Even then, the marketing itself was probably the worst thing. No one knew of the game, so no one got it. Streamers nowadays are often the best form of marketing, but streamers were too easily stream-sniped, and even once they added anonymous features, the playerbase was so small you could still know if you are in the same lobby and streamsnipe.
My best guess is the same reason a lot of fun indie projects like this fail: Outreach/Marketing. Outside of the few dbd content creators covering it, which performed poorly because content creators focusing on a single game like dbd always get WAY less viewership on variety content, you really didnt see it anywhere. It's also a game that at least seems more fun to watch than actually learn how to play. Most players queued for 2-3 matches, died within 5 minutes after having no idea how to play then either refunded or never launched it again
Sold as a stealth game, played like Warzone. Zubat's "Deceiving all over Deceive Inc. teams" shows you all there is to know
I completely agree. This game was SO fun, it was unique and fresh. It’s a shame honestly
There are a LOT of games like this, and as someone who's played multiple, although the initial problems that lead to decline varies massively, I can say with 100% confidence that the reason so many multiplayer matchmaking games like this struggles is because...
Once playerbase starts dying for any number of reasons, either your queues increase to massive degrees or you are going against people with 100s or 1000s of hours as a completely new player. This then makes more and more people leave, even the people that absolutely LOVE the game, because it's just not worth 30+ minute queues for them, and new players don't want to go against sweats every match.
I tried Deceive inc, kept going against insanely high level players as one of the only level 1's, literally most people would have a crazy amount of playtime, I would've continue if it wasn't so buggy for me, but even then I would've dropped it quickly regardless.
Another example is Home Sweet Home Survive (aka HSHH), I LOVED that game so much, it was an incredibly fun dbd-like game that just felt more unique than many others. But queue times could be anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour, and if it's quicker then you best believe you're going against a tryhard who knows every mechanic of the game. Hackers were also a problem, which was part of why playerbase dropped, but, in the end, I dropped it because the queue times were too obnoxious. Imagine if DBD had 30-60+ minute matchmaking times at all times, the game would die so fast.
It's very much likely the change in the way people play games. This game was a multiplayer shooter, which already loses all the players that just don't like to be competitive. Then you have "stealth" mechanics in this game, but they are not the kind of stealth you would have in Hitman or Assassins Creed, because you can't easily take people down.
This game just kind of created it's own way how you are supposed to play the game, but it doesn't fit any of the common playstyles anymore. People in shooters either want to have the action or the stealth takedowns, but here you have stealth movement, with environmental awareness and quick consequential shooting action. The playerbase just adapted, to play the game the way they would think is fun and it just didn't really keep the unique elements anymore and then you gotta ask yourself, why play a game with limits to your playstyle, than playing a game that fully supports your style.
Gamers nowadays just don't play that much for immersion and enjoying the experience anymore. They don't want to read lore or generally long texts, if something is skippable they skip. Slow stealth movement is way too boring for most players. I mean DbD for example works perfectly with stealth and it is a mechanic of the game, the fact that walking doesn't leave scratch marks, but long time players will practically run through the whole match, because most people don't want to move slowly and take their time. Social Media, RUclips Shorts, TikTok; It all works for you to spend only a small time on one thing and then get some new input. This practically trains people to have short attention spans, with the least amount of input from themselves to get more content.
Read a long book to learn about this epic story? Nah, why do that if you can just watch some short funny TikToks; Watch this hour long stream of my favorite streamer? Better go to the clip channel to watch the funniest moments in short clips and the best of it, you can get thousands of the best parts in short clips and if you get bored just switch to something else.
A game about strategy, environmental awareness and slow well chosen movement is just not working for peoples short attention spans. Go back to the time when playing a videogame and reading was practically the same and people would have praised Deceive Inc. for the fast action and quick matches.
Deceive is really one of my favorite games and I hate how small the playbase has gotten 😢
There was absolutely 0 marketing for this game. The only people I know that played it were DBD streamers, who people tend to not watch if they aren't playing DBD.
I never played it but I could tell that the game definitely had elbow grease behind its creation and it is a real shame that something unique like this just fades out.
I've had a lot of fun playing with a private lobby where we all play on personalized rules, public lobbies were a massive mixed bag for me since I'm bad at shooters.
RIP, was a fun game to watch streamers play when it was released
They should have made the game buggier. Thats been working for DBDs player retention.
Tbh I mostly forgot about it - I barely ever saw any advertising of it, and honestly didn't even realise it existed. It seemed somewhat interesting, but it wasn't something that stuck in my mind. Honestly, it's biggest flaw, imo, was that it was good without being great - it had an interesting premise, but failed to hook people. Similar to Spellbound, a game I absolutely loved, and that died as well.
I've never heard any of the content creators I watch ever talk about it until now. It's a shame, it seems really cool
Sad to hear. I loved this game, but couldn’t get any of my friends to play, idk why no one was interested.
Basically: launch game, wait ~20 minutes for a match to start with a half full lobby, 2 minutes into match 2 vault codes already open, if you grab the briefcase you get 1 tapped by an Ace, if someone else grabs it they go ultra instinct and you'll at most get pot shots while they laser your head from 50m away.
Sold as a spy game, played like TDM w/objectives
This is kind of crazy. I literally just downloaded this game for the first time today and had a lot of fun with a few friends for a few hours.
I started playing aggressively, like you speak of, but if you’re good it didn’t matter, I won like 90% of my games. I had friends that also played that way and got similar results, so at least anecdotally playing aggro did not mean that you died more if you were a good shooter player.
Maaaaan... first XDefiant yeasterday, now this?!?! WTF?! WHY?!?!?
This and hunt showdown are two games that are so incredibly good but I cannot convince my friends to step away from COD, Apex, Fortnite etc to play. So frustrating.
Hunt goes crazy
Hunt used to be good. Give it another year and it will just be CoD given the direction it's headed.
@mightystu49 Haven't played in a few months but it felt more or less the same as it always has, what did they do?
@ in what way is hunt anything like COD? And please don’t say the ghost face skin or bounty clash.
@ I’m curious as well. I know some ppl complained about the ghost face skin. Which sure if you have a problem with them bringing licensed content into the game that’s fair but has nothing to do with gameplay.
And some ppl thought bounty clash ruined the spirit of hunt, but it has the same core mechanics and deliberate gunplay that make hunt what it is, just compressed to eliminate all the running around in bounty hunt. Still nothing like cod.
So yeah not sure what they mean. Guess we’ll see.
not enough Otz
Not many content creators played this after a while. Providing a rank system would have placed a competitive edge which would have also incentivized playing this game.
I loved this game and I never got a single OCE player in my lobbies which meant I was in ping disadvantage for the most part but it was still so much fun.
Praying for a miracle too.
I still love this game and play it every few days with my duo, it is genuinely unjust that this game is not succeeding. The meta absolutely supports the intended playstyle now and my friend and I have a disgusting winrate playing to punish careless agents.
because I've never heard of it
I wasnt buying into a game with so few players. Its that simple. I learned that lesson a long time ago.
I have not even heard of this game until today.
I adored this game, so, so, so sad to see it never able to get the foothold it deserved. The biggest issue was that rushing and ignoring stealth was pretty optimal for a while, which resulted in people bouncing off of it. but for it to have gone from 8k concurrent players to this is just shocking. And the game is so filled with love. I can only hope Tripwire does more than just keep the game on life support, even with the dev team gone, but I don't have much hope. Farewell, deceive inc. . . you were too good for this shitty industry.
I've never even heard of this game
should we throw a party? should we invite bella hadid?
I can answer. It was confusing and hard to play for a new player and very scary to learn
25.99 CAD was just too much initial cost for what felt very experimental.
i was waiting for this game to come out i didnt even knew it was fully released
In my opinion you almost hit the nail on the head, its a fun game with interesting mechanics and satisfying shooting and it was cheap, but not free. Especially if you are trying to get other friends to play even a low barrier. Its a similar situation as to what happened to Gotham city imposters where due to the experimental gameplay people couldn't afford to buy a game that might look fun in videos but isn't when they play it.
Fuck I miss Gotham city imposters
Rip game. Honestly the most impressive aspect of the game was that it was actually hard to tell if someone was an NPC or not. You would think NPC's would act very statically but it was genuinely pretty hard to tell
Yeah and they improved a ton too, I came back to the game recently and had quite a few moment where I shot someone that I 100% thought was a player when it wasn't. And I'm definetly not the kind to me trigger happy
"Servers and matching will remain up for the foreseeable future, and we are exploring how to keep the game available to its fans long term, but have no announcements to make on that today"
Never played this game - it's just not my kind of thing, but this line at the end of studio shutdown notification made me go "woah, they really care". Wish more game studios were like this. They couldn't make this game pop and even though they can't keep working on it they don't want it to just disappear (unlike other companies that just pull the plug and game you own is no longer available to you despite having a perfectly functional offline mode). I hope they succeed at this and somehow let the community host private servers.
As someone who dropped off a short time after they added Octo and has been on and off ever since, I was wondering why they so quickly decided to pull the "deep lore character" card with releasing Knight and not saving her for further down the road
In retrospect, I'm glad they did, seeing as we've unfortunately reached the end of the road
Seeing people just sprinting down hallways wanting people to shoot them and knowing I couldn't made it unfun. The best players would get shot at first but be able to hide and let ai damage you in return and finish you off. Stealth wasn't a thing.
Seems like players optimized the fun out of the game
I saw a youtube video recently about how character design sells games and I think it applies here. DBD has a cast of recognizable killers/survivors and plenty of licensed characters while deceive inc has some ok designs but nothing that really grabs people.
1. The gimmick of stealth was broken at the start so run and gun was optimal, 2. it wasn’t free and competing with (and this is gonna sound crazy) hunt showdown in the same niche of extraction shooter with an objective to steal. It was essentially family friendly hunt showdown even with the same mechanic of the team with the objective gets wallhacks. If it marketed better and was free to play it would of had a better lifespan
In every PvP game, with or without SBMM, there will be a crowd of people who try to win as much as possible and optimize their playstyle to the point no one else has fun. The devs have to either immediately nip these players in the butt and and say "we dont want to support these playstyles, this is supposed to be a more casual-friendly game" or immediately support these players and say "we encourage the more competitive playstyle and will continue to support it as the game evolves over time." From what ive seen the devs were too slow to respond, and the casual players immediately left as the more competitive players took over, and when they did finally respond they started nerfing the competitive playstyle in hopes of bringing the more casual playerbase back but at that point the damage was done and all they did was push more people away from their game who actually enjoyed a more TDM playstyle. Maybe I'm wrong but fans of the game and people who kept up with it can correct me.
Nah you nailed it. I'm a casual that left with the first wave cause of the "death match" meta, and I recently launched the game again and honestly the changes they made to punish that are awesome, but now only the tryhard players are left so I get outguned nontheless. If the game had first released as it is currently I could honestly see it stand a chance.
I loved this game on release. Very cool concept, put a good bit of hours into it with some friends. However, the game itself is kind of intimidating to learn, and learning how to deal with each character on top of figuring out the best way to get into restricted areas AND be able to respond properly when getting shot (aka not whiffing the entire mag because I suck ass) was just a bit much for me. I found myself just getting killed for playing slow, and learning almost nothing each attempt because sometimes I would get into somewhere fine, and other times I would get shot before I even got to the door. I would hit my A key slightly wrong or something and now I have this team of level 200 turbo nerds preparing a 3-pronged instakill before I even recognize who's who. Then my teammates have to either fight them and die trying, revive me and die trying, or just accept that I'm dead and I will now be watching the match for the next 5-10 minutes.
Maybe I just got some really unlucky matchmaking, but almost every match I played was either A: Almost nothing happened, we fought maybe one person and just left with the briefcase for free, or B: We run into one team that hard camps a particular vault and steamrolls us as soon as we even THINK about entering the front door. The game became way less of an interesting stealth PvP game and way more of a PvP FPS but you don't know who the enemies are. The enemies know who YOU are though because they have way more experience than you and can catch the most minute mistakes. If I was doing something obviously weird and then died, that would make sense, and that did happen many times. However, half the time I would just be WALKING and get slaughtered. Maybe a certain character had some kind of ability to tell who I was every time, but the game just seemed plagued by sweatlords and I didn't feel rewarded for throwing my hat into the ring.
Maybe I just suck (I do), but it never struck me as a fun experience. I was just constantly stressed, eyeing every NPC like a paranoid schizo until eventually I got shit on.
The big issue is being super aggressive wasn't an issue for Yu-mi and her best weapon, so it completely bypassed the stealth bit. It was a great game and I really enjoyed it, but I also think it suffered from the solo player being at a huge disadvantage with no revives, and the simple fact is most gamers are playing multiplayer solo. If there was a self-revive system, or something similar, that may have helped as well.
Not enough advertisement and too much shooting and not enough actual stealth gameplay which the devs didn’t know how to handle. Was one of the most fun with games I have had in years. Sadly it turned to the bad
When it doesn't matter how good I am at all the other otherwise fun elements of the game because the other players will always kill me even if I start with a height/range/surprise advantage, since they're getting consistent headshots while jumping around like a flea on cocaine, I have no reason to play because I'm never going to win when it comes to a shootout. That one aspect of the game has been overshadowing all the other cool parts of the intended game flow and the fun has evaporated. Sure it's a skill issue but if that one skill trumps all others then it's really no different from all the other shooters I passed over to play Deceive Inc. instead because I thought it had more going on.
This is definetly my take away too. I loved the game tried it on release and loved it but I quickly found that the "skill gap" was really frustrating. I'm just not that good at gunfights and that's the reason I left the first time, and it almost happened again when I came back around recently...
Simple: It became death match only and 3rd partying made stealth awful. If you went around guns blazing than losses and wins were quick, if you went stealth you'd be open to be 3rd party whenever you inevitably hit a shootout, which, win or lose would mean you'd die to the 3rd party strat. They also made some massive mistakes with say Larcin's invis which was so strong you had effectively a free escape, with other characters having kits that made stalling out fights very easy which made 3rd partying even worse. In essence the best characters are the ones where you can two tap someone with minimal risk and not characters who have to give up a lot to survive a fight, because not only did you have to win it you had to win it in record time or else anything you'd get from the fight would be wasted. Stealth isn't rewarding, fights are barely rewarding so the only winning move is not to play for a lot of people. This wasn't helped by the level up and unlock systems which led to you having to waste a BUNCH of time on a character to get the gun you want but because dupes per team weren't allowed you'd inevitably be forced to use a character you don't like / don't know without the necessary unlocks that makes the character OP ala Prince's unsilenced gun being his best but also only available through grinding, same with Chavez.
In shambles this wasnt the type of game id play but I loved the style so much and the gameplay seemed so damn unique
It went from a spy game to an fps game. They tried changing it but the tryhards got mad and the diehards got sad
Same reason why outlaws and legends died, it is really hard if not impossible to make a stealth/slow paced game in multiplayer
I miss this game. I still update it but haven't played in forever
There’s like 5-7 games that are taking up 90% of the entire industry’s player base. Multiplayer games as a whole are just have too much competition I feel
this game to you was what spellbreak was to me.
You are forgetting a major factor, the Luck variable. Sometimes luck is a reason for people success plus all the other things you mentioned. Also this game don't have licences (yes believe it or not they are important) a spy game could have James bond. Jason born, Kingsman (already have the humor) gaming is a very competitive space
Might not have received the best advertising. Outside of seeing otz play it, I had yet to see it anywhere.
Could say the same thing for vhs, unfortunately a few poor upper-management decisions early on kills the player base who never usually return because it’s not their favorite franchise (dbd, smash, league, etc.)
From an outsider, it wasn't marketed well. I never even heard of it until certain DBD YTers uploaded stuff on it.
There's going to be a charity event from the community on twitch around this game. unfortunate timing but still
one thing youre forgetting is the players who quit bc of people who just shot every NPC (before the whole heat system was added) never came back, since that huge design flaw was in the game to begin with, and people just played TDM, it lost a lot of players.
4:01 the game was SO FUN, but you stopped playing.
How do you, in this entire rant, not stop for critical thought?
It probably didn’t even have much advertisement. Hell I’ve never heard of it till now. It sounds fun as hell!
The only people who played this game were DBD players, and that's why I actively avoided the game.
The oracle of none competitive competitive games
Because multiplayer only games in an already highly competitive market continue to lead to these topical games that come and fade in an instance, leaving you with a digital paperweight.
definitely the marketing, i never saw anything about decieve Inc online at all at any point really