Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 31-03-2020
Online Games Bay
After months and years of neglecting and mistreating the players on Steam Steel Ocean closes in early May 2020.
Steel Ocean, Chinese game similar to World of Warships, announced that the only server available for non-Chinese users via Steam will be closing in early May 2020.
This news is hardly surprising taking under consideration that for months and years the game was not updated, upgraded nor even looked after. Meeting 20 players at the same time on the US server was a small miracle, yet the game kept its original matchmaking engine that often did not worked well, f.e. out of 8 available players of same tier it was choosing only 6 and put battleship and 2 destroyers against cruiser and two submarines...
Despite being constantly neglected the game have built small community of players that did not enjoyed World of Warships and preferred the options available in Steel Ocean (like submarines, manual anti-aircraft and secondary guns, night battles), even though the creators clearly never really cared about non-Chinese users. Let me put it this way - the US server undertook biweekly maintenance breaks and from time to time... it looks like someone was forgetting to switch the server back on leaving users disgruntled and hungry for answers.
Now officially the game closes on Steam in early May 2020, the client will be available on some Chinese game systems, but as usual the players have to rely on gossips rather than creators. And the saddest thing is Steel Ocean was really a good game that needed some tender loving care to blossom (despite being constantly bombarded by WOWS spammers) and it seems that the users were more concerned about the game than the creators.
21-12-2021
add a commentNo, it’s not gonna be another "World of Warships is dead" or "WOWS is dying" article. Unfortunately, this completely broken game is alive, and it looks like with the community they have, it will be alive for a long, long time. But it is a final chapter - I’m done.
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