There is some recent news. Tencent announced that the PC online game "Call of Duty OL", which has been operating for many years, will stop the registration of new users on June 1st and officially launch the game on August 31st. Shut down the server. This game, which started a non-deletion test in 2014, finally came to an imperfect end after about seven years of operation.

(Server Closing Announcement)

Perhaps for many players, when they heard the news, what they thought of was not that "Call of Duty OL" had actually been shut down, but that "Call of Duty OL" had been shut down. Call of Duty Online has just been shut down. This is not difficult to understand. For many players, including me, "Call of Duty OL" is just a poor imitation of the original "Call of Duty". Some people even attribute its birth to Tencent's attempt to maintain "CF" A malicious agent in the domestic market. After all, after the launch of "Call of Duty OL", Activision Blizzard removed all the original "Call of Duty" games from Steam in China, making it difficult for domestic players to play the original "Call of Duty" games. Sudden improvement.

("Call of Duty OL" promotional poster)

No matter what the reasons were for Tencent to represent "Call of Duty OL" at the time, these have become dust of the past as the game ceased service. . Rather than clinging to old news that has not been finalized for several years, the suspension of "Call of Duty OL" itself may be more worthy of our discussion.

If we want to talk about the main reason for the suspension of "Call of Duty OL", there is really no room for discussion. After all, anyone with a discerning eye can see that the reason for the suspension of the game is obviously that the game is not making money. So what is the reason that has led to the decline of "Call of Duty OL" in recent years? This may also need to start with a set of weapons called "Hellwalker".

(Hellwalker series weapon pre-order page)

When "Call of Duty OL" just started operating, the numerical environment in the game was actually not bad. Tencent, as the operator of the game, At that time, it was obvious that "Call of Duty OL" and "CF" were planned to be operated separately as two different product lines. Therefore, at that stage, "Call of Duty OL" did not have a significantly higher value like "CF". Although there are paid firearms such as gun skins that can be purchased for a fee, the overall balance of the game is still within a controllable range, and the underlying gameplay from "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" has indeed been achieved. A group of players who like FPS games but don't like "CF".

(In the early version of the game, the game name also had the suffix Modern Warfare)

But the good times did not last long. After all, "Modern Warfare" as the reference object of "Call of Duty OL" did not It is not a long-term operation game. The game itself does not consider long-term retention of players in the gameplay design. However, "Call of Duty OL" obviously cannot launch new games on a regular basis like the main series. This leads to the fact that "Call of Duty OL" will inevitably embark on a path away from the main game and its own original gameplay as time goes by. For players, such behavior is undoubtedly unacceptable. So as time went by, the number of players of "Call of Duty OL" began to decline, and the strategy of not selling values ??also made it difficult for the game to compare with other FPS games owned by Tencent in terms of revenue. So in August 2015, the Hellwalker series of weapons officially opened for pre-order, and "Call of Duty OL" finally opened the Pandora's box of paid numerical weapons.

(Arctic.50BMG Hellwalker)

From the current perspective, the strength of the Hellwalker series of weapons is actually not that outrageous. It is far from the original fire unicorn in "CF" There is still a long way to go to turn the tide of the battle around. But this is still a very bad beginning. After Hellwalker successfully increased the revenue of "Call of Duty OL", paid weapons began to gradually increase, and the game's style also began to gradually change from the mediocre military style at the beginning. It started to look like some weird magical game. As for the "fairness and justice" once promised? Nothing matters in front of flowing water.

No one can tell whether this behavior planned by "Call of Duty OL" is right or wrong, but it is obvious that after this, the players of "Call of Duty OL" began to decline at an even more exaggerated rate. , as time goes by, players lose, and the game begins to become unpopular. But even so, Tencent continues to maintain the operation of the game.

(Gradually Magical)

So what caused Tencent to decide to shut down the servers of "Call of Duty OL"? I think the arrival of another Call of Duty spin-off game might be a major reason.

On October 12, 2020, the "Call of Duty Mobile Game" developed by Tencent's Tianmei Studio Group officially began public beta testing in China. According to Tencent's official statement, the game follows the original "Call of Duty" game It has many classic maps, gameplay and characters, striving to restore the gaming experience of PC games on mobile phones. To put it bluntly, I bought a mobile game adaptation of the "Call of Duty" IP.

In the design of "Call of Duty Mobile", Tencent has avoided many pitfalls that it has encountered in "Call of Duty OL", such as the game completely abandoning the connection with the world view of the main game and Story mode, thus avoiding the limitations of the original game during version updates like "Call of Duty OL". At the same time, the game has also changed from Activision Shanghai development of "Call of Duty OL" to Tencent's internal development, giving Tencent a greater say in the game and better control. For "Call of Duty OL", starting from the day when "Call of Duty Mobile" was officially released for public testing in China, the countdown to death has appeared above its head.

(The developer of "Call of Duty OL" is actually Activision's RAVEN studio)

If you have paid attention to domestic game industry reports, it is not difficult to find that in recent years, domestic The mobile game market continues to expand, while the PC game market continues to shrink. Faced with the decline of the client game market, established domestic manufacturers such as Tencent, NetEase, Shanda, etc. have begun to deploy on the mobile phone and have begun to reduce investment and budget in client games. In such a general environment, every manufacturer's non-headline PC game products often cannot escape the fate of being shut down, and "Call of Duty OL" happens to be a vivid example.

(In the domestic game industry report from January to June 2020, the proportion of high-end games was only 20.18)

There are many reasons for the failure of "Call of Duty OL", but regardless of Whatever the reason is, it can ultimately be attributed to Tencent. In this game, we seem to be able to see Tencent’s consistent style in the past era of PC gaming, and we can also see the end of many of Tencent’s once-popular games. For Tencent, "Call of Duty OL" after the launch of "Call of Duty Mobile" is just a ball of ashes that has been burned out and is worthless and meaningless.

The one that was cleaned up as ashes today was "Call of Duty OL", so will it be "God of War" that will be cleaned up tomorrow? What kind of "useless thing that is dead but not rigid" will be abandoned by Tencent the day after tomorrow? I can’t deny Tencent’s investment in the domestic game industry in recent years, nor can I turn a blind eye to its attempts to improve its brand image over the past few years. But just like Call of Duty OL, which has just been issued a death notice, these have been forgotten by the public. The game is still evidence of Tencent’s past, and it is a trace that cannot be cleaned away like dust.