Amazon Games’ Crucible back in closed beta just weeks after release

Amazon has been forced to pull a free-to-play video game it only released around a month ago so that it can finish being made properly.

Amazon’s attempt to create the next video game phenomenon has gotten off to a rocky start, with the game being pulled after being released before it was ready.

The free-to-play shooter Crucible is being developed by Relentless Studios, a wholly owned arm of everything company Amazon.

Relentless is one of three video game developers currently owned by the company.

Crucible is supposed to be a team based online third-person shooter where players fight against one another as aliens, humans and robot hunters.

It’s an attempt to capitalise on the surging video game market, buoyed by recent successes in massive online games like Fortnite and League of Legends.

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Crucible only launched about six weeks ago.

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Currently limited to PC, it released on the popular Steam client towards the end of May and quickly started to run into problems.

There was the usual teething issues for an online game, with players struggling with connectivity issues and being unable to find a match.

Absent at launch were a number of other features many would consider essential for team-based gameplay.

A number of problems have led to the game being “unlaunched”.

There was no in-game voice chat to communicate with your teammates or a way to figure out where they were through an on-screen minimap like most other games.

The developers then spent the next few weeks stripping features from the game before eventually conceding defeat in a blog post on Wednesday.

We’re back with another developer update: we're taking Crucible into closed beta starting tomorrow. Read about the details and how you can participate in the beta here: https://t.co/ox5KG7Fr55

— Crucible (@PlayCrucible) June 30, 2020

The game will now go back into an invite-only closed beta so that the developers can finish it.

In the unlikely scenario that you’d already started playing the game you will be able to continue doing so, even against the developers themselves as they set aside time to play with the community and solicit feedback.

If you had played the game before it’s more likely you didn’t see a need to continue doing so.

Crucible has been reviewed more than 10,000 times on Steam, with more than 6,000 of them being negative.

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Working together with a team was made harder by not being able to communicate with them or see where they were.

Complaints included the game running poorly even on advanced hardware, laggy connections that weren’t replicated in other games, and an everybody-gets-a-ribbon style scoreboard that sorted players alphabetically rather than by performance,

“In its current state it can make you downright miserable to play this”, one gamer who clocked almost 69 hours in the game complained.

“I had fun with the game, not gonna lie, but it’s definitely not finished,” another with 59 recorded hours said.

The guns are reportedly not even that much fun to fire.

PCMag called the game “hollow and forgettable”.

Gamespot described it as a game that “fights itself at every turn”.

Those who did leave positive reviews frequently did so based on its potential rather than its performance, saying it could be a great game once it added the important features that were missing at launch.

Originally published as Amazon Games’ Crucible back in closed beta just weeks after release