So here’s a nice surprise for a Thursday morning: If you missed the old Motiga MOBA-shooter Gigantic, you can play it again – briefly.
MMO readers will recall that Motiga was a well-liked indie company (with several ol’ Carbine devs on board) when it pushed Gigantic into closed beta way back in 2015 (with plenty of applause from the people who heard about it). But it was pretty obvious early on that the game’s finances were a problem, as the studio underwent multiple rounds of layoffs even before Perfect World agreed to publish the game a year later. Then there were more layoffs after launch ahead of the console release, and in the fall of 2017, PWE closed the studio entirely, followed by the sunset of the game in 2018.
Now, of course, PWE (and Cryptic) are owned outright by Embracer’s Gearbox Entertainment, which apparently decided to revive the game for funsies, according to emails dispatched to players. “You’re invited to play Gigantic (again!) during our limited time throwback event!” the email says, suggesting players can “re-live the good old days of playing this beloved strategic hero shooter!”
The event runs from 3 p.m. EDT today through October 7th at 12 a.m. EDT (midnight on the night of the 6th) – so don’t be fooled by sites saying the event runs for three days. It’s not even a day and a half, just this evening and all of tomorrow. But that’s 33 more hours than we had before, and since a lot of our readers already have the Arc launcher thanks to games like Star Trek Online and Neverwinter, installing it for a quick run won’t be hard.
It’s worth noting that Embracer specifically has become a financial dumpster fire this year after a collapsed funding deal with the Saudis, leading to multiple studio closures and layoffs; we’ve even seen rumors that it’s trying to sell off Gearbox (which is fortunately still super valuable) for cash. It seems unlikely that the company is reviving an entire game for 33 hours out of the goodness of its heart, especially given that just preparing an old shooter like this for modern players will have cost it money. Perhaps it’s better to think of this as a trial balloon or a stress-test to see whether the IP still has legs – or to fluff up the studio’s offerings a bit for potential buyers.
Here’s our own last play-through of the game from July 2018.
