By all accounts,FBC: Firebreakis not a bad game. Unfortunately, Remedy’s multiplayer player-versus-environment (PvE) shooter also doesn’t distinguish itself in a stacked genre, competing with titans like Deep Rock Galactic, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide and Killing Floor.
This has led to particularly poor player retention, resulting in FBC: Firebreakaveraging approximately 30 concurrent players on Steam. The game is available on Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Premium, but Steam numbers are usually indicative of a game’s overall popularity.
FBC: Firebreak Isn’t Done Yet
Remedy is an acclaimed studio, and fans would probably have understood if FBC: Firebreak immediately went into maintenance mode considering the low player numbers, but the Finns aren’t giving up just yet.
The studio has released a comprehensive update post addressing player feedback and outlining the immediate future of FBC: Firebreak, which has numerous updates on the way to try and improve player retention.
“We’ve seen many players come into the game and leave within the first hour,” the post reads. “And that’s because our first hour can be frustrating; you feel ineffective and confused as to what to do. This needs to be improved.”
Remedy has already added an introductory video to more explicitly introduce FBC: Firebreak’s narrative elements, with more “onboarding” to come later this year.
The studio is also adding new guns, and giving players full-powered guns at the beginning of the game, eliminating some of the tedious grinding that players were immediately exposed to when playing Firebreak.
Jobs are also going to be changed drastically, with dynamic and randomised elements being introduced, with the goal of making the game feel less predictable; in-line with the crisis response theme of Firebreak.
“As we hope has become clear, we are pushing a lot of improvements and changes into the for our first Major Update,” reads the post. “We are extremely excited about these changes and about delivering even more than we’d originally been planning.”
The full list of changes coming to Firebreak can be readhere. The first Major Update is set to be released later this year, in winter.
Remedy is currently working on Control 2, which has entered full production as of February.
