You don't need a Frost Giant with negative $2 million in the bank and Unreal 5 and "SnowPlay" to make a tower defense game. You need $0, a copy of Unity or Godot or even GameMaker Studio, and a couple of students with some free time.
Technically you're right, but to the level I'm talking you absolutely do. To make a moba u need some students like the old dota mods, or to make a autobattler u just need the same thing. But if you want it to hit a certain quality level you need more experienced devs and a proper team with funding. That's how all these genres took off from grass roots projects and billion dollar companies saw potential in them. Riot games is the perfect example with the auto battler. You obviously had tons of mobas. You even had Mechabellun which pretty much came about from Direct Strike. Of all those, I think tower defense could use some love and a budget next. But that might just be me. Idk. Look at even bloons...
But the entire problem with Stormgate was that the team failed to hit an acceptable quality level on any aspect of game development. Whether it was the worldbuilding, the writing, the visuals, the gameplay, or the sound design, everything was of terrible quality.
Why on Earth would a second game from Frost Giant be any different?
Now that the Stormgate servers are offline and no more multiplayer of any kind is possible, a curious thing has happened:
The latest weekend peak on SteamDB was about 80% of the number of players a week earlier, and the average is about the same!
None of these people are playing 1v1, or co-op, or custom vs. games, because those no longer exist. They are all either playing the campaign, or skirmishes versus AI (which apparently are super buggy because none of the updates in the Community Patch were tested and they broke a lot of the vs. AI logic)
What this seems to be saying is either:
1. There were only a literal handful of players in the entire world who were playing the vaunted 1v1 mode, you know, the one that Frost Giant spent so much of their time and focus on, or
2. There are a few dozen or so players who simply refuse to play anything else in the world except Stormgate. Now that 1v1 and co-op is gone, they are just going into the game and playing skirmishes against a broken AI, because they have nothing else to do.
I suppose there could be option 3, that the majority of players of Stormgate are just bots who are there for unknown purposes, but I don't know how to confirm or deny that.
probably just got a small bump because people were talking about the shutdown so like 20 people decided to check out the game again that they already owned.
You don't need a Frost Giant with negative $2 million in the bank and Unreal 5 and "SnowPlay" to make a tower defense game. You need $0, a copy of Unity or Godot or even GameMaker Studio, and a couple of students with some free time.
Technically you're right, but to the level I'm talking you absolutely do. To make a moba u need some students like the old dota mods, or to make a autobattler u just need the same thing. But if you want it to hit a certain quality level you need more experienced devs and a proper team with funding. That's how all these genres took off from grass roots projects and billion dollar companies saw potential in them. Riot games is the perfect example with the auto battler. You obviously had tons of mobas. You even had Mechabellun which pretty much came about from Direct Strike. Of all those, I think tower defense could use some love and a budget next. But that might just be me. Idk. Look at even bloons...
But the entire problem with Stormgate was that the team failed to hit an acceptable quality level on any aspect of game development. Whether it was the worldbuilding, the visuals, the gameplay, or the sound design, everything was of terrible quality.
Why on Earth would a second game from Frost Giant be any different?
There’s a world where Frost Giant were sitting around with their 40 million dollars of funding, and an indie team with a great idea who’d love to push their nascent game with a killer idea to the next level if only they had the budget were both sitting around musing next to each other and went ‘ahah!’ and team up
We’re not in that world. Frost Giant spaffed away one of, if not thebiggest RTS budgets since SC2 on Stormgate
On May 05 2026 03:56 Jeremy Reimer wrote: Now that the Stormgate servers are offline and no more multiplayer of any kind is possible, a curious thing has happened:
The latest weekend peak on SteamDB was about 80% of the number of players a week earlier, and the average is about the same!
None of these people are playing 1v1, or co-op, or custom vs. games, because those no longer exist. They are all either playing the campaign, or skirmishes versus AI (which apparently are super buggy because none of the updates in the Community Patch were tested and they broke a lot of the vs. AI logic)
What this seems to be saying is either:
1. There were only a literal handful of players in the entire world who were playing the vaunted 1v1 mode, you know, the one that Frost Giant spent so much of their time and focus on, or
2. There are a few dozen or so players who simply refuse to play anything else in the world except Stormgate. Now that 1v1 and co-op is gone, they are just going into the game and playing skirmishes against a broken AI, because they have nothing else to do.
I suppose there could be option 3, that the majority of players of Stormgate are just bots who are there for unknown purposes, but I don't know how to confirm or deny that.
Either way, it's not great.
Someone said they got 6-7k hours in stormgate. Yes, 6 to 7000 hours.
On May 05 2026 04:01 iamperfection wrote: probably just got a small bump because people were talking about the shutdown so like 20 people decided to check out the game again that they already owned.
This seems to be the most reasonable answer. People read about the shutdown and wanted to see for themselves
On May 05 2026 04:01 iamperfection wrote: probably just got a small bump because people were talking about the shutdown so like 20 people decided to check out the game again that they already owned.
This seems to be the most reasonable answer. People read about the shutdown and wanted to see for themselves
I agree that this is probably the correct answer. But we'll see if these people hang around.
Stormgate Archives is still broadcasting games on Twitch! But they are replays of older games, since, obviously, you can't cast new matches any more. That level of stubbornness is kind of impressive, to be honest.
Thus far the only breakdown I’ve heard about the proposed ‘Team Mayhem’ killer/game saving mode, from someone on the latest. Quite interesting.
It doesn’t sound like even if they pulled funding out of their arse, that they really had stuff working at a fundamental design level.
If Itano’s read is correct it actually sounds less dynamic, less improvisational and even more punishing and lacking comeback mechanics than 1v1
Which is quite impressive really. I’ve been playing a bunch of The Finals with kiddo lately, as with any semi-big game you’ve got a pretty rigid meta at the top level, but lower down there’s still a lot of crazy improvisational fun to be had.
The problems with it sound beyond balance, just very core issues of fun as game design, something Stormgate has generally struggled with.
They’ve seemingly perpetually struggled to add some extra element(s) beyond the classic Blizzard formula, but they (rightly) want to have anti-snowball mechanics. Except those mechanics tended to either not be fun, or actually ended up being snowballing mechanics themselves.
So say creeping, cos we need creeps is a thing to give it some ‘identity’. But it’s kinda pointless. But then we buff it so they’re worthwhile, but then whoever has early map control can just farm so their advantage compounds. So then we get Stormgates which are less snowbally, but in ways frustrating.
Two of my top 5 all-time games are WC3 and SC2, they have some of these elements but it doesn’t feel as aggravating. SC2 is a straight 1v1, no-frills mechanical slugfest, it is what it is. WC3, there’s a lot of complexity added by the hero/creep/items and those systems all work together. Shit item luck feels bad, but you might get good, and the difference isn’t settling lower level games. It adds some fluidity too, one might pivot to a new plan depending on your drops or your opponent’s, but in a way that feels considered and interesting. WC3 having greater map variety helped too.
There’s just nout with that with Stormgate, there’s nothing interesting there.
Team mayhem was just a shitty custom map, really, don't put too much thought into it. You can call it concept of a game mode, yes, but nothing more. It was something one map maker could make in a couple of days in WC3/SC2/DotA2 editor. There are much better custom maps in these games.
On May 06 2026 02:43 ChillFlame wrote: Team mayhem was just a shitty custom map, really, don't put too much thought into it. You can call it concept of a game mode, yes, but nothing more. It was something one map maker could make in a couple of days in WC3/SC2/DotA2 editor. There are much better custom maps in these games.
Clearly Frost Giant didn't put that much thought into it!
The problems with the map seem pretty obvious, and it's telling that Frost Giant was completely unable to deal with them, or even understand what they were. Which was insane, because the company promoted Team Mayhem to both investors and customers as this amazing, world-changing, ground-breaking RTS game mode that was going to revitalize the genre.
Even more insane was how they slapped everyone who tried it with an NDA, just so they wouldn't be able to say what a massive disappointment it was. And they only bothered to lift the NDA once the game was already confirmed to be shutting down.
Truly it was an example of IDT, or idiocy-driven development(tm).
On May 06 2026 02:43 ChillFlame wrote: Team mayhem was just a shitty custom map, really, don't put too much thought into it. You can call it concept of a game mode, yes, but nothing more. It was something one map maker could make in a couple of days in WC3/SC2/DotA2 editor. There are much better custom maps in these games.
Clearly Frost Giant didn't put that much thought into it!
The problems with the map seem pretty obvious, and it's telling that Frost Giant was completely unable to deal with them, or even understand what they were. Which was insane, because the company promoted Team Mayhem to both investors and customers as this amazing, world-changing, ground-breaking RTS game mode that was going to revitalize the genre.
Even more insane was how they slapped everyone who tried it with an NDA, just so they wouldn't be able to say what a massive disappointment it was. And they only bothered to lift the NDA once the game was already confirmed to be shutting down.
Truly it was an example of IDT, or idiocy-driven development(tm).
On May 06 2026 02:43 ChillFlame wrote: Team mayhem was just a shitty custom map, really, don't put too much thought into it. You can call it concept of a game mode, yes, but nothing more. It was something one map maker could make in a couple of days in WC3/SC2/DotA2 editor. There are much better custom maps in these games.
Clearly Frost Giant didn't put that much thought into it!
The problems with the map seem pretty obvious, and it's telling that Frost Giant was completely unable to deal with them, or even understand what they were. Which was insane, because the company promoted Team Mayhem to both investors and customers as this amazing, world-changing, ground-breaking RTS game mode that was going to revitalize the genre.
Even more insane was how they slapped everyone who tried it with an NDA, just so they wouldn't be able to say what a massive disappointment it was. And they only bothered to lift the NDA once the game was already confirmed to be shutting down.
Truly it was an example of IDT, or idiocy-driven development(tm).
On May 06 2026 02:43 ChillFlame wrote: Team mayhem was just a shitty custom map, really, don't put too much thought into it. You can call it concept of a game mode, yes, but nothing more. It was something one map maker could make in a couple of days in WC3/SC2/DotA2 editor. There are much better custom maps in these games.
Clearly Frost Giant didn't put that much thought into it!
The problems with the map seem pretty obvious, and it's telling that Frost Giant was completely unable to deal with them, or even understand what they were. Which was insane, because the company promoted Team Mayhem to both investors and customers as this amazing, world-changing, ground-breaking RTS game mode that was going to revitalize the genre.
Even more insane was how they slapped everyone who tried it with an NDA, just so they wouldn't be able to say what a massive disappointment it was. And they only bothered to lift the NDA once the game was already confirmed to be shutting down.
Truly it was an example of IDT, or idiocy-driven development(tm).
So it was just like the rest of Stormgate then...
I think it's a different case.
Most of SG is like that because they tried to copy already existing RTS games, but lacked competence to do it properly.
Team Mayhem was something they tried to invent by themselves. So they lacked competence in both fields, ideas and implementation. That's why it was much worse. It's obvious, because they shut down the whole thing after the first round of closed alpha testing, and never returned to it again.
Also, it's obvious they haven't put any resources in this. I don't have any development info, but it felt like it was made by 3 people in their free time. For example, stuff like Azeroth Grand Prix looked a lot better.
I think the idea of 3v3 team Mayhem or whatever you want to call it in general is a good concept. Bring the MOBA community and the RTS community closer together. Bring some makro elements to MOBA and some more mirco / hero elements to RTS. But as with everything else, Frostgiant had no idea what to do and how to do it.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/szhL3ZP.png)
