Zenith: The Last City has gone through some changes recently. More appropriately, RamenVR, the development team behind the game has had to make some hard decisions to try and keep the game profitable amid chronic operating losses over the past year. With their release of Zenith: Nexus and their free game mode called Zenith: Infinite Realms things were supposed to change. Here’s what happened instead.
If you’re a VR gamer, there aren’t very many MMOs available that make use of HMDs quite like Zenith: The Last City. However, cornering the market on a niche like VR hasn’t seemed to be as profitable as RamenVR had hoped. Having peaked on Steam nearly 2 years ago with just under 5 thousand players, the now renamed title hasn’t exactly been heating up the Steam charts.
While the game is available across a multitude of platforms which include PSVR and the Meta Quest store where it has a stronger following, fans have been unhappy with the shift from Zenith: The Last City to Zenith: Nexus. Previously Zenith: TLC had an overwhelmingly positive rating, up until the shift to Nexus where it now has a recent review rating of overwhelmingly negative.
Most of the reviews state that RamenVR’s shift to the development of Infinite Realms, the free to play game mode, is a signal that The Last City is done for. These worries have migrated from Steam to the Meta Quest store as well, with negative reviews relaying fears of abandonment and RamenVR’s lack of appreciation to long-standing fans being the primary criticism.
“Ultimately, we had to make a choice between making fundamental changes or putting the game on ice. We made these decisions so that we could keep running Zenith for as long as possible.” CEO Andy Tsen stated in their blog post outlining why the team has gone this route.
It’s unfortunately a situation where there may be no short-term winners. Fans that have Kickstarted the game, and stayed with RamenVR from the beginning feel like they are being left in the dust, never having their visions realized for what the game could become. The developers, on the other hand, have to do whatever it takes to become profitable, so that they can keep the game, and the studio, afloat.
Nexus was released on February 26th on the Meta Quest store and the 27th on Steam. It’s too early to tell what will happen in the future, but we hope that the developers are able to make peace with their community.
