Shatterline has been in early access for about two years but now some major changes have been made to the game that very few people are talking about. Oh ya… and they’re actually shutting the game down… For Now. A Lot of what is to come for Shatterline is either very confusing or up in the air so I did my best to scour the internet for all the information I could find to get an idea of what is going on with this game. So if I missed something in this video or you have information I don’t, drop the knowledge in the comments for us.
If you don't know what Shatterline is, the game has two main game modes on offer. A futuristic 6v6 arcade shooter very similar to Black Ops 4 and Xdefiant. As well as a team based extraction mode. So what is happening to Shatterline and why are they making massive changes to the game out of nowhere?
In an effort to keep the game alive and get access to funding and reach broader audiences frag labs, the development studio behind Shatterline, has partnered with Faraway to reboot the game or as they’re calling it closing early access to get ready for the “full launch”. That’s a very interesting way to spin it but why all of a sudden are they making these changes? My guess is that Shatterline has been in a steady decline for quite a long time mostly due to lack of marketing and only being available on PC, which has excluded a massive number of potential players. There are very few people who even know about this game so I do think that if they get a marketing budget they can definitely bring some more awareness to the game which is desperately needed. But who is Faraway and why did they choose to partner with them? I couldn’t find an about page explaining exactly who they are and what they do but from what I could gather it seems that essentially they’ve created all the tools and infrastructure for developers and players to create they’re own games and nfts. The idea being that these games will be able to easily create “play to earn” systems and have cosmetics as NFT’s for those games as well as presumably the market place for them to be collected and traded on. All of this of course running on web3 and blockchain technology.
That raises another important question, what is an NFT and how will it work in a game? I’m sure by now most people have heard that NFT stands for Non Fungible Token which essentially means that it’s a digital asset that cannot be copied or faked and is usually only available in limited quantities. In video games this would likely be things like cosmetics such as weapon skins, operator skins or really anything a game decides to tokenize. Meaning you could potentially buy or earn a really cool limited time cosmetics and instead of it being tied to only your account in that specific game, in theory you could sell or trade it for other cosmetics and will also have ownership outside of the game in your faraway wallet. If this is starting to go above your head don’t worry we’re going to go over the pros and cons of NFTs in video games in just a bit.
With this new partnership and NFT addition to the game there is probably quite a bit of work to be done to get this implemented into Shatterline. And that’s probably why they will be shutting down the servers for this game August first to get to work on preparing the game for what they’re calling the full launch of the game later this year. Now the way this will work in shatterline is you will own or hold the NFT’s in your faraway wallet and have access to them in game via the integration they have planned. I think the question is what types of items will be NFT’s in the game or at least that was my first thought. And it looks like it’s starting off in a very strange way. Faraway has acquired the rights to something called HV-MTL or what I assume is supposed to be Heavy Metal??? Which is a mech game where you have to take care of the mechs like a companion?? I told you it’s weird. But it doesn’t stop there. The way these mechs will be implemented into shatterline is that the will become your support companion in the PvE extraction mode, helping you to take out enemies and complete objectives. At this time they’ve stated that these will be completely optional as well as only be available in the extraction mode. So if you’re a fan of the core multiplayer game like myself it looks like this mech situation won’t effect it. Phew…
As it stands now these support mechs will not be created or “minted” to use the proper NFT term, in shatterline itself. But rather already exist in the marketplace. I’m not sure what the plan is here, if you’re going to be able to earn them in game or if it’s something you’ll have to purchase outside of the game to have access to. Now that rabbit hole gets a little deeper so stick with me. It looks like they plan to also have earnable NFT’s, separate from these mechs. The example that was give is that they want pro shatterline players, if that’s even a thing in the future, to have the option of a player card in the form of an NFT and allow fans to be able to buy and trade pro players cards just like any other sport. Which if you think about it is actually a really cool concept but for this to work shatterline is really going to have to work hard on building up and supporting a massive player base. Otherwise there’s a massive risk of this game becoming an obscure reddit topic with very few players making this entire overhaul completely pointless.
There’s been a pretty heavy backlash to almost all of the games that have implemented this type of NFT monetization system so I’m not entirely sure what the thought was here. Maybe they’re ahead of the curve and this will be something that will be adopted by many games in the near future. I do think there are some really cool possibilities that could be done with blockchain technology, it just comes down to whether or not you trust the people behind the came to manage it properly. So what are some of the benefits? Well for one it would allow players to have ownership of their items outside of just one game. So in the future if a remaster ever comes or another publisher decides to purchase the IP, they could very easily implement those cosmetics into the next game. As games become more connected you also have a really cool possibility that something you earn in one game could become usable in many games connected to the same network. So when you earn a camo or weapon in one game you could also have access to it in multiple games. For a thought experiment lets imagine a game like call of duty implemented something like this years ago. Wouldn’t it be great to boot up the newest call of duty and have access to the mastery camos you unlocked in the game 4 years ago? There's just something priceless about being able to show off that you’re a veteran of a franchise. The last example I’ll give is that this could also create a whole marketplace for players to buy, sell and trade their NFT’s. CSGO already does this without needing to use blockchain but it’s a good example of what’s possible. I’ve seen cosmetics in CSGO sell for thousands of dollars. Move that type of commerce onto the blockchain and all of a sudden you have a really cool way for people to sell their items and also allow for the development team to take a cut of every sale. Now I know the danger here is that a gready publisher will over monetize and ruin this but it could be a really good way for smaller indie teams to earn income from all of the work they put into the game.
Now there is one big problem that using NFT’s and blockchain technology presents. And that is Steam. As of now the game is available to download on and play through steam but that will be changin in the future. If you don’t it is against steams terms of service to use NFT’s in any form in a game. So After the servers close down on August first. Shatterline will be moving to the epic games launcher. For some people this isn’t a big deal but for others they won’t touch anything outside of steam. Now if you’re like me and you don’t care what platform the game is on as long as it’s a good game that you can play with your friends then welcome to my channel.
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