'PUBG with superpowers' was briefly popular, but ultimately couldn't survive a declining player count.
The live service grim reaper has come knocking on the door of another multiplayer shooter: Super People 2 (formerly just Super People, confusingly), the PUBG-style Battle Royale game that tried and failed to gain popularity by adding super powers to the formula.
Citing a continuing decline in active player counts that’s resulted in overlong matchmaking times and one-sided matches, South Korea based developer Wonder People announced this week that Super People 2 will be shuttered for good. If you’re curious about the shooter and want to give it a try before its termination, it’s bad news: the game’s client is no longer available for download for anyone who hasn’t already installed it once. On August 21, Super People 2 will be permanently shut down for the remaining few still playing.
A good number of people did give Super People a shot: Its peak concurrent player count was over 47,000, according to SteamDB, but by April of this year its peaks were under 1,000. Since the announcement that it’s being shut down, the concurrent player count has dropped further, sometimes dipping below 100.
Recent Steam reviews for Super People 2 cite an over reliance on bots to fill matches, the presence of cheaters, and a disappointing cosmetics system as factors that pushed them away from the game. This all comes shortly after a too little too late “revolutionary” relaunch six months ago, when the developer added the “2” to the title and said that the full extent of the changes “couldn’t possibly be described”.
What remains of developer Wonder People’s YouTube channel shows off a game very much in the vein of PUBG, with the same janky modern combat and material scrounging, but in a much livelier, less bombed-out map. The positive parts of the Steam reviews say that Super People’s easy controls and movement mechanics made it an enjoyable alternative to PUBG. As a card carrying PUBG defender, I’m curious about how Super People 2 could have evolved the formula, but its gaudy real money store with embarrassing, Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball tier cosmetics were a real turn-off, especially when I could be playing as Attack on Titan’s Eren Yeager in Fortnite with comparably minimal effort.
In the end, Super People 2 is another skull lining the live service shooter throne, joining the likes of Rumbleverse, Hyper Scape, and dozens of others. I don’t know from experience whether Super People 2 qualifies, but as Morgan pointed out recently, it feels like there’s less and less space for fun shooters that aren’t mega-hits.
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