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Saber Interactive’s Space Marine 2 made a bombastic first impression late last year, winning over 40k fans with its uncompromisingly chunky super soldiers and a linear campaign that got straight down to business. Since release the game has seen a regular cadence of minor updates, most recently the addition of a datavault in early February and, oh yes, a hulking new tyranid enemy with a massive gun on its back.
The co-op side’s operations mode is where Space Marine 2 offers something of an endgame, and since launch Saber has added new maps, enemies, and various cosmetics and armour pieces. It’s kept on fiddling with balance, too, and recently undertook an extensive rework of perks alongside adding the ‘Absolute’ difficulty mode.
Despite this, there’s been some rather heretical grumbling in the ranks about the regular community events, the game’s season pass, and whether this predominately singleplayer game with a $60 price tag is becoming a live service game by stealth. Plenty of players already think it is. So Saber has moved to reassure them with a new “note about community events” that almost raises as many questions as it answers.
“We have noted that the Community Events have received cold feedback since we introduced them as an additional way to unlock cosmetic items,” reads the note, attributed to Saber and publisher Focus Interactive. “We saw that many of you mentioned FOMO generated by the events. Rest assured, we are not looking to transform Space Marine 2 into a full live service game.
“The items available through events WILL be available later, for everyone. We want Community Events to be a way to unlock the items in advance, for the most dedicated players, and not to be a source of frustration and stress for everyone.”
The FOMO element is because certain cosmetics have been time-limited, with a recent example giving players ten days to earn a rare helmet which couldn’t be obtained by other methods. It also doesn’t help that these rewards require players to create a third-party PROS account.
Saber goes on to acknowledge that “we must provide a smooth experience in unlocking said items, which has not been the case so far. We deeply apologize for the trouble, and are currently working on a simplified process to unlock the items, to make the experience less constraining.”
So the time-limited cosmetics will be earnable at some point in the future, and the studio’s also committing to a simpler unlock experience. This does address player concerns head-on, but then we get into a definition game thanks to that curious choice of phrasing: “full live service game.” Which is weird because it’s basically the makers saying it’s not a live service game…. but it kinda is?
Space Marine 2 is hardly unusual in this. There are plenty of games that wouldn’t fit the live service definition but incorporate live service elements such as season passes, timed events, and rare cosmetics. Needless to say, plenty of players are pointing this out in response to the announcement.
“It isn’t a live service, but loves to throw around live device terms like ‘season’ and ‘road maps,'” says Hydrastix on the game’s subreddit. “Throws out FOMO skins as ‘events’ and locks some behind WH+ subs. Certainly sounds like live service to me. They are just saying it isn’t a live service so people won’t hound them about getting content out faster.”
“How confusing,” says The SilentTitan, “what do you think live service means? It’s continuously going to be updated for the indefinite future (like a live service game would), it will continue to add new content for the foreseeable future (like a live service game) and will constantly put out packs that only be bought with real money (like a live service game).”
Despite the grumbles, Saber and Focus have at least addressed one of the big community complaints here. Definitions of live service aside, players don’t like limited time cosmetics because it is one of those elements that’s on the line of being slightly shady and is straight-up manufactured scarcity. It probably shouldn’t have been a part of Space Marine 2, but the fact that the complaints have led to a fairly decent response should be acknowledged, if perhaps not applauded.
Space Marine 2 has a roadmap of new content until the end of this year, and given the game’s huge commercial success is likely to be supported well beyond that. The next major content drop is the “7.0 Update” which doesn’t yet have a date, but will be adding one chapter pack, one champion pack, a new weapon, new operation, a weapon perks rebalancing, and the addition of a prestige rank in PvP. And there’ll be more Space Marine to come, with the Games Workshop beancounters positively giddy about the game’s reception.
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Kurt Indovina
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