As game remains with 1% concurrent players on PC, is Babylon's Fall the worst release of 2022 so far?

Square Enix's latest release has been a disaster of the highest order (Image via Square Enix)
Square Enix's latest release has been a disaster of the highest order (Image via Square Enix)

Babylon's Fall has walked into a list of things that every video game will want to avoid, especially if it's an AAA product. The game's release wasn't long back, but it has quickly lost whatever few players it had managed to reel in initially.

This recent development will be a major headache for Square Enix, which has already been in trouble regarding underperforming games lately.

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Assessing if Babylon's Fall is the worst release of 2022 isn't as straightforward since there have been releases like CrossfireX. However, the game's player count is a strong indicator of how well it's doing on PC.

The game is also available on the PlayStation 5, but the reviews don't paint a great picture there either.


Babylon's Fall has been a terrible release in 2022, and there are some major reasons for it

Babylon's Fall was released earlier this year on PlayStation consoles and PC. Square Enix's ambitions were quite high, and developers PlatinumGames had a solid reputation built on past releases.

All that, however, doesn't appear to matter as much anymore as the game's concurrent player count has dropped to shockingly low numbers. While the numbers were never great to begin with, they have steadily declined to reach all-new lows.

While the player count isn't available on PS5, one can easily view what the critics have been saying about the game. The game's Metascore is one of the lowest for any release on the PS5, which helps put things in perspective.

For any other game, it can be hard to qualify for the title of the worst game so far this year when one evaluates the situation at hand. The developers, however, haven't given up yet, and more content is being planned for the players. But this gives rise to a question: For whom will the new content be added if there's no one playing the game?


What led to the poor performance of Babylon's Fall?

This list will be a long one as it's not one single problem that has led to the downfall of this game. For starters, Babylon's Fall has one of the dullest campaign designs compared to the campaign designs of other modern games.

The title's world and levels provide very few incentives for players to play the game. The combat is one of its stronger aspects, but it gets dragged into the mud by the surrounding elements associated with the game.

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Then comes the entire matter of monetization. It's unclear who felt that it would be a great idea to include premium items that could affect the game's economy. There are way more currencies than should have been the case in the first place.

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This resulted in Babylon's Fall appearing as a cheap free-to-play game and not a full-priced release. The emphasis on showing itself as a live-service game also didn't work. The title doesn't have the required content for that, and excessive monetization is unlikely to help.

Though PlatinumGames has promised that there will be no slowing down in development, only time will tell if there will be any actual improvements.