I wanted to show off Fuser, the Harmonix DJ/Festival game from, uh, November 2020, to a friend, and was baffled that it felt so dead.
Little did I know that less than a week ago they announced they were going to disable live services - Which absolutely sucks, because this game had one of the most original Multiplayer experiences out there, and possibly the only functional player - audience integration I've ever seen, where regular people can just fire up the game and play for people using the game as a client and get broadcast on Twitch via the Diamond Stage.
Possibly worse, is that they're going to disable sales. Of a game with a ton of DLC. So you either buy it now, or never get it (even if you can only play it locally.)
This is just the inevitable heartbreak of centralized 'Live Service' games. But damn I wish this one had longer legs on it. I just want to shout out that this game existed before consigning it to the bin of unique lost rhythm games.
For one maddening minute I considered pulling out Wireshark and seeing how complicated the communication is, and whether it'd be possible to write a server, but I just don't think I'm deep enough in the community (or modern game dev in general) to consider something like that.
man i loved playing this a while ago, but basically hit a wall where the mixes weren't interesting to me with the same songs, until i coughed up more for the dlc. it was a great concept though, and i understand why the dlc charge had to happen (i also wonder if regardless, some song dlc would have to get delisted due to licensing issues and whatnot).
rip this lil fun game.