Last Flag, a newly released CTF-like online-only competitive multiplayer shooter from the game studio co-created by the lead singer of Imagine Dragons and his brother, isn’t going to get any new content past an already planned update, as the devs admit it failed to find an audience on Steam. The shooter is the latest example of an online game failing to find an audience, despite the star power attached to it.
Last Flag launched on April 14 and was developed by Night Street Games, a studio founded in 2020 by Imagine Dragons lead singer (and amateur game dev) Dan Reynolds and his brother, Mac Reynolds, who is also the studio and band manager. In an interview last month with Bloomberg, Mac told the outlet that he hoped “people will give the game a shot.” That doesn’t seem to have happened. The game never hit over 600 concurrent players on SteamDB, even with the help of the studio advertising the game via the Imagine Dragons social media accounts with millions of followers. Now, the studio and Mac have confirmed that development on future content is unlikely to happen.
“If you’ve been following the Steam charts, you already know that Last Flag has been unable to find the audience it needs to give all of you the experience you deserve,” said Mac in the game’s official Discord server via Knoebel on Twitter. “But that doesn’t mean we’re about to throw in the towel. The financial reality of our situation means we’re unlikely to be able to support additional development (including console, for now) beyond some upcoming patches.”
In a Steam blog post from the studio posted on Friday, the team clarified that it was unlikely that it would be able to invest in any “additional development beyond our upcoming planned patches.”
Last Flag won’t be shutting down, but the studio is moving on
In his longer message to players on Discord, Mac confirmed that Last Flag won’t be shutting down and said he hopes that these final updates will bring “more value and control.” In the coming months, players who stick with Last Flag can expect a new mode, character, map, and some new cosmetics.
“Last Flag isn’t going anywhere,” said Mac on Discord. “The faith that the community put into our shared dream means everything to us, so we’re going to make sure that the game doesn’t disappear. In addition to working with our backend partners and Steam to ensure that players can continue to play the game they purchased, we’ll be adding the ability for the community to set up custom lobbies with alternate game rules and find their own best version of Last Flag.”
“Being able to build Last Flag for you has been a dream come true. Our game belongs to you now, and we hope to continue capturing flags with you for years to come. In the meantime, we’ll see you on the battlefield-and we hope you’ll tune in for what comes next from Night Street Games.”
While it’s obviously a sad ending for Last Flag and the team that worked on the game, it is far from a surprising one. All sorts of big and small online games have launched over the last few years and failed to find an audience as juggernauts like Fortnite, CoD Warzone, Roblox, and Minecraft continue to stick around years and years after launch and consume most of the oxygen in the room. From Concord to Highguard and more, shipping an online-only multiplayer-focused game, free or not, is a very risky move in this day and age, and I hope that Night Street Games’ next project isn’t yet one more online-only experience that crashes and burns after just a few weeks or months.
