This week’s Launch Spotlight is short and sweet, with a duo of games releasing on Steam, one of which is strictly labeled as abandonware. If you’re not familiar with abandonware, it means the game won’t receive any support or updates, so what you see is what you get.
Ultimate Pirates
We wrote about Ultimate Pirates release back in 2019, but this mobile and web strategy RTS MMO has long since failed to live up to developer Moonmana’s expectations and shuttered just a few short months later. Now that the game has failed, Game Designer and Lead Developer Artem Shpytiak has released the game on Steam at the studio’s cost as abandonware. The game won’t receive any updates, will not have support of any kind, and will have all monetization stripped away.
“I cannot reveal all the details of the unfortunate story of how this game was launched and why it was shut down. However, I can tell you that we spent almost 4 years developing this game, and players who liked it could only enjoy it for a couple of months.”
-Artem Shpytiak, Lead Developer, Ultimate Pirates.
There is certainly more to the story here, but Artem has stated on the Steam page that he is under a strict NDA that won’t allow him to explain the circumstances of the game’s downfall and subsequent Steam release. The infrastructure to keep Ultimate Pirates running is coming out of the pocket of the developer, which means the game will continue to run at a loss, but Artem states that as long as Moonmana is developing games, Ultimate Pirates will continue to run. It’s unlikely that this game is going to turn very many heads, as it’s extremely buggy, but it’s also a completely free RTS MMO with zero monetization, so if you want to try it, it definitely won’t hurt your wallet.
Dragona Fireborne
If you’ve been keeping track of our list, you may have noticed that Dragona: Fireborne made our list last month. The team at LivePlex had released the game into beta, but now it has ‘Officially Released’ as of May 25th, 2024. Dragona plays up the gimmick of dragons quite a bit, as you harness their power to execute devastating abilities.
Dragona was originally developed for Korean audiences and has now made its way globally, with their latest server opening in Singapore. LivePlex is really banking on the older 2000s era of visuals, so the outdated look is by design. Unfortunately for LivePlex, Dragona has a very negative review rating on Steam. Some of the complaints are wild, such as GM’s stealing money, a player guild running an entire server, and that much hasn’t changed from the closed beta. In addition to those complaints, other reviews express how buggy the game has been. While we separately investigate some of these claims, I would certainly proceed with caution if you want to give this one a try despite it being Free2Play.
