Steam Codes: The Dismal Battleborn

Battleborn, one of Gearbox’s huge hopes for this generation, is going down in flames as we speak. It’s population has been dwindling since its launch back in May 3 and hasn’t been able to change it up ever since then. It has become even more difficult for the Gearbox game to bounce back with Overwatch overshadowing (lol) it in every aspect and completely getting dominated in social media. Overwatch memes, jokes, PotGs, fan art, advertisements, and literally everything under the sun has been able to push Battleborn into obscurity. Adding more fuel to the fire, or, rather, the lack thereof, Battleborn, as essentially closer to a moba than Overwatch, has failed to make a dent in the moba-playing communities of LoL and Dota. Here on out, where is it supposed to go?

Steam Codes: The Lack of Star Power

Screw Team Fortress 2, LoL, Dota, and CS:GO: the real fight is between Battleborn and Overwatch. But, at this point, it’s no contest! Overwatch has gone to soaring heights of popularity that none have ever imagined it ever reaching and Battleborn takes the opposite route into the shadows of deep obscurity. What went wrong for Battleborn? Certainly not the choice of having Steam codes, that’s for sure.

Marketing. Plain and simple.

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Battleborn is not a horrible game. No, not by a long shot. In fact, compared to Overwatch, Battleborn has a lot more going for it as a game. With tons of content including different multiplayer game modes that aren’t only entrenched in the moba tradition, and a single player component that folks sorely want for Overwatch as well, it should have performed better.

But the very fact that Blizzard was able to hype up Overwatch to a degree that none could compete with is what sealed Battleborn’s fate. The only thing Overwatch can truly offer, other than the solid and stellar team-based gameplay, was its cast of extremely attractive characters. Battleborn was not able to do the same with their cast despite being uniquely awesome as well. Everybody knows who Tracer is, even if they don’t play Overwatch. But on the other end of the spectrum, I ask a couple of my friends who… well, I couldn’t really ask them if they knew who the Battleborn mascot is because I don’t even know who it is.

For a game that touts itself as a hero-based shooter, Gearbox failed to make anybody care about the heroes – even their own playerbase. At 800+ players on a Sunday night, that’s not an unfair assessment to make.

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