When it comes to dead games, the actual activity of said titles can range from games that are falsely declared dead because a small but vocal part of the community is unhappy about some aspect of the game (Fortnite, Call of Duty, etc.) to games that are literally dead, and in which finding a full lobby is all but impossible even during peak playtimes.
With that in mind, I played ten “dead games” to see how dead they were and rated them by the following criteria.
Earthfall is widely known as a dead game for one very good reason: It is a dead game that essentially died twice, once following its disastrous original launch, which saw the developers release an unfinished, unpolished, and poorly optimised game for too high a price.
While the developer lowered the price and refunded all of that they could who overpaid, it would be well over a year before Earthfall was in a playable state, and even then, it remained very light on content for its (new lower) price tag.
Ultimately, a lack of faith in the developers (who eventually did manage to fix performance issues), a lack of meaningful content, and a terrible launch ensured that Earthfall is one of just a few games to have been declared dead on arrival at both its early access launch and full release.
Earthfall is almost entirely dead, with the PC community peaking at around six concurrent players each day and the console community faring only slightly better.
Holospark ceased to exist as a company in December 2019 and has not updated the game since June of the same year.
Basically impossible without preplanning or queuing up as a group.
Earthfall does not support cross-platform multiplayer.
Z1: Battle Royale (formerly H1z1) died because the developers did too little to innovate the game. Instead of moving forward with new and innovative features to compete with PuBG and Fortnite, they kept returning to the past in an effort to win back players who had left for greener pastures.
While it was a valiant effort, rolling back changes, which kept the bulk of H1Z1’s player base playing the game, did little but aliante its remaining player base while doing little to win back players who had moved onto better games.
A final attempt at saving the game (following its rename to Z1: Battle Royale) opted to start matches quicker by allowing lobbies to begin with as few as two players and forcing players to fight in the smallest area of the map possible instead of allowing players to wait for a few minutes and play in full lobbies that had access to the full map.
As a result, the Z1 community vanished almost overnight. While a few players try to make the game appear more active by using bots idling on the main menu, Z1: Battle Royale is believed to have less than 20 concurrent users for much of the day, spread across multiple regions, ensuring that full lobbies and fun games are a thing of the past.
Z1: Battle Royale is almost entirely dead, while occasionally, a moderately famous streamer will log in to play, and for a few days, it will get a boost of activity; its ageing gameplay loop, lack of updates, and infestation of cheaters ensure that any new or returning players quickly lose interest in the game and return to greener pastures.
Currently, Z1: Battle Royale does not even have developers, with the new developers returning it for free to its original owners, who have opted not to develop it any further.
Most lobbies start with fewer than six players, and finding a full lobby outside special circumstances is impossible.
Z1: Battle Royale does not support cross-platform multiplayer, which is a shame as the PS4 version of H1Z1 remained active for far longer than Z1: Battle Royale, even though it, too, is now similarly dead.
Realm Royale Reforged is probably this list’s most active “actually dead” game. With robust cross-platform support and a small but dedicated community, Realm Royle Reforged manages to keep lobbies at least partially filled around the clock, even though it is essentially a worse version of Fortnite and has done nothing but waste the developers’ time and money since its original Steam launch in 2018.
You can read our full review of Realm Royale Reforged here.
At the time of writing this, Realm Royale Reforged is roughly 99.99% down from its all-time higher of 105,440 concurrent players on Steam, with 106 players being online; however, it is early in the day, and while Realm Royale does not do very well on Steam reach a peak concurrency of around 300 players, which when combined with other stores and platforms ensures that at least 1,2k players are online at peak times each day, which when you include bots is enough for plenty of active lobbies, even if the majority of each lobby is not human.
It appears that following Hi-Rez’s splitting up into multiple smaller studios, no one is currently working on updating Realm Royale Reforged. However, it has risen from the dead before and may just do so again in some fashion.
It’s pretty easy to find a lobby, but lobbies where players outnumber bots are rare in 2024.
Realm Royale Reforged offers robust cross-platform support, which is the main reason it remains “active” today.
Lego Brawls is dead in spite of its robust cross-platform multiplayer support, mainly because it was originally an Apple Arcade exclusive and didn’t find its way to PC and console until it was already read in the water, and even then the developers opted to release it as a buy-2-play game, despite this type of game doing much better as a free-2-play game, ensuring that it was unable to attract a sustainable player base.
It is almost entirely dead, with daily peaks of as few as 11 players and an all-time peak of just 77 concurrent players on Steam and similar numbers on other platforms.
While Lego Brawls is still officially being developed, there have been no content updates since December 2023’s Christmas update.
Basically impossible without third-party matchmaking support or arranged matches.
Lego Brawls supports cross-platform multiplayer between all versions of the game.
H1Z1 died because the developers did too little to innovate the game. Instead of moving forward with new and innovative features to compete with PuBG and Fortnite, they kept returning to the past in an effort to win back players who had left for greener pastures.
While it was a valiant effort, rolling back changes, which kept the bulk of H1Z1’s player base playing the game, did little but aliante its remaining player base while doing little to win back players who had moved onto better games.
In a similar manner to how Z1:Battle Royale was doomed by bad developer choices, the developers of HIZ1 on PS4 also started matches quicker by allowing lobbies to begin with as few as two players and forcing players to fight in a smaller area of the map than what they were used to instead of allowing players to wait for a few minutes and play in full lobbies that had access to the full map.
While the H1Z1 community didn’t die right away due to the larger player base and larger play area for small lobby matches than the PC, this action, in many ways, hastened the end of H1Z1, which at the time of writing is barely more active than Z1:Battle Royale.
The H1Z1 community held on far longer than the PC community, but a lack of updates coupled with an abundance of better games have all but decimated the community, with an estimated 500 or so players left who still play worldwide.
H1z1 has not been updated since October 2020, and likely will not receive updates in future unless its current owners decide to invest heavily in the game and relaunch it. Something they are currently not planning to do, with the long-dead PvE mode instead being slated for a relaunch in a few years.
Most lobbies start with less than ten players, and finding a full lobby outside of special circumstances is essentially impossible.
H1Z1 supports cross-generational play between PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles.
Destruction AllStars is a nice concept and a fantastic-looking game with interesting-looking characters. Unfortunately, it is also shallow as a teaspoon and launched as a PS5 exclusive at a time when very few people had access to a PS5 due to supply issues.
As a result, Destruction AllStars suffered from terrible player retention due to its shallow gameplay and a very low influx of new players due to its reputation as a dead game, as many of the people who may have wanted to play it were still on PS4 and had no way to do so.
In an effort to save the game, the developers turned off many popular modes to funnel the remaining community into a smaller selection of modes; unfortunately, this just shrunk the community further. As of 2024, it’s unknown how many people play daily, but it’s unlikely to be more than a few thousand, with daily peaks of 300 or less.
Destruction AllStars is no longer in development, and it appears the developers have moved on to other titles (including the former Xbox console exclusive Sea of Thieves).
It’s not impossible to find lobbies, but it’s certainly not easy for new players to become established when the majority of each lobby will be veteran players who have stuck with the Destruction AllStars through good times and (mostly) bad.
Destruction AllStars is only available on PlayStation 5, which is a big part of why it’s on this list.
Almost everything about Foamstars is a mistake, from being a PlayStation exclusive to its FOMO (fear of missing out) business model, which sees new battle passes dropping roughly every 30 days or so, to its generic and unattractive visuals and generally uninspired (but not terrible) gameplay loop.
While it’s not the terrible game people thought it was going to be, and the fast-paced combat is fun in small doses, it’s just not a game anyone was asking for, and the fact that the most active Foamstars subreddit has just five people online while I type this is proof of that.
Foamstars is not a terrible game, and it was given away for free on PS Plus in February 2024, so some people are still playing it, but very few people are buying it now that it is no longer free to claim.
Foamstars is still being updated, but unless something changes, I cannot see Square Enix supporting it one day longer than they are legally required to as part of their Sony exclusivity deal.
Finding a full lobby can take between 10 seconds and 15 minutes, depending on mode and region. However, Square Enix blames faulty matchmaking for Foamstars’ occasionally excessive matchmaking times, which is possible, as other titles, such as Rogue Company, have suffered from similar issues since launch.
That being said, when a game is struggling this much to attract/retain players, you would think that making sure matchmaking was working optimally ASAP would be priority number 1.
Foamstars supports cross-generation play between PS4 and PS5 consoles.
World of Warcraft has never been a dead game, but at times, it has lost a substantial part of its community despite remaining the most active MMORPG pretty much at all times; from lacklustre narratives to puzzling balancing choices, there have been times when the World of Warcraft community were well within their rights to feel that World of Warcraft was “dead to them”, however even during the worst of times (Warlords of Draenor and Shadowlands), World of Warcraft remained very active with millions of active subscribers.
In short, World of Warcraft is not dead, has never been dead, and is unlikely to die anytime within the next twenty years, but players who felt that World of Warcraft was “dead to them” have certainly had multiple occasions to feel this way.
World of Warcraft is very active, with millions of players logging in to explore Azeroth each day.
World of Warcraft is actively updated, and the developers showed a glimpse into their plans for the next three expansion packs (3-6 years) at Blizzcon 2023.
World of Warcraft has dozens of highly populated servers for each region, and finding people to play with will not be difficult for those who wish it.
World of Warcraft is currently only available on PC, but players from all servers in a region can play together via group finder and friendlists.
While we are talking about the unified Call of Duty experience that Activision announced would be the single launcher for all Call of Duty games going forward (after abandoning their previous single launcher just two years ago), as a whole, every Call of Duty game released since 2019 is very active on all Platforms, and while some very vocal elements of the community make it their life’s purpose to attack the latest release with every fibre of their being, before loving it once it is no longer the latest game, Call of Duty is very active, and played by millions of players each day.
In short, while some Call of Duty seasons are better than others, those calling it dead are either overreaching, following the crowd or simply lying.
You can read our full review of Call of Duty here.
Call of Duty duels with Fortnite to be the most-played game on Playstation and Xbox. With tens of millions of monthly active users, it is undoubtedly not a ” dead game.”
Call of Duty receives content updates twice every season, in addition to a slew of special events throughout each season. These events give players a chance to earn selected cosmetic items and weapon blueprints for free.
Finding full lobbies is very easy for all modes, and I rarely have to wait more than a few seconds unless matchmaking/server issues cause a delay.
Call of Duty offers full cross-platform support between all supported platforms.
Fortnite has been called a “dead game” for various reasons, none truthful, including the following.
Epic introduced a change that a small but vocal part of the community doesn’t like, and they believe Fortnite to be “dead” because of it.
Epic changed the coloured background of certain characters in the locker, which (somehow) caused thousands to claim the game was “dead.”
It’s popular to hate Fortnite, and declaring it a “dead game” is one way to gain karma and likes with certain elements of the gaming community.
Thankfully for fans of the game, Fortnite is far from dead and continues to be played by tens of millions of players each day.
Unfortunately for those who are saying “Fortnite is dead” for clout, lying is a sin, and causing others to believe lies doubly so.
You can read our full review of Fortnite here.
Fortnite is very active and rarely drops below 1.5 million concurrent users, an impressive figure in its own right. However, this figure is nothing compared to top seasonal highs, which can see Fortnite averaging at 3 million concurrent users.
In November 2023, Fortnite broke its time concurrent user record when 11,616,374 players were logged in at once during the extremely popular Fortnite OG season. Over 100 million players enjoyed the event, which saw 44 million unique players jump into Fortnite’s season 1 map in a single day.
Fortnite is updated every few weeks with the exception of Christmas and Summer holidays, when the developers have a much-needed rest. In place of Fortnite updates every two weeks, players enjoy special events to tide them over.
Matchmaking is essentially instantaneous for all official modes, with many user-created modes enjoying similarly quick matchmaking times.
Fortnite offers full cross-platform support between all supported platforms.
So there we have it: Out of the ten dead games I played (so you didn’t have to), six were actually dead, one was still kind of alive, and three were extremely active and well-supported. This proves that not every “dead game” is actually dead and that players should be very wary of anyone who makes their living or gains their fame by causing controversy and spreading lies.
We have written a lengthy editorial for those interested in this subject here.
