The other day we were reminiscing about the beloved Torchlight franchise in the MassivelyOP office and ended up wondering what happened to its third installment. You know, the one we used to cover fairly frequently until all of the sudden we didn’t because it morphed into a non-MMO and nothing was going on with it.
So it’s time for a little digging to see what’s been going on with Torchlight III over the past few years. You might recall that once upon a time, PWE and Echtra Games were positioning the then-titled Torchlight Frontiers to be the first MMO in the series. But they eventually watered it down to merely an online-RPG with a smaller scope and surprisingly lackluster design.
Fans were not impressed, and Torchlight III pretty much floundered at launch with many significant bugs still unaddressed to this day. It pushed out only a couple of post-launch updates, with the last big one arriving on May 2021. About that time, Zynga bought up Echtra Games, and Torchlight III remained with Perfect World Entertainment (which itself was bought out by Embracer’s Gearbox not long after that).
What did PWE and then Gearbox do with Torchlight III since spring 2021? Pretty much nothing. The game is still active, averaging about 46 players per day on Steam Charts, but it hasn’t received any updates in the past few years. The franchise spotlight has since shifted to XD Entertainment’s Torchlight Infinite, a cross-platform OARPG that’s at least been somewhat more successful. Either way, it’s a depressing situation for what was once one of the indie darling IPs of the industry.
