The Golden Yachties series is MassivelyOP’s annual set of fauxwards, named in honor of some guy who was convinced we are all making bank writing about MMORPGs is so lucrative that we’re typing MMO blog posts from a gold-plated yacht. Did Poe’s Law apply? Nobody knows. We’re enjoying the view from the yacht’s deck, shown above, however.
Today, we reveal our pick for fastest time to MMO sunset. And the winner is…
Velev, in six days
The nicest thing I can say about this story is that at least it’s not a pure MMO that we have to feel super bad about, but it was still a mess on our periphery: Multiplayer PvEvP extraction RPG (can we please be done with this phrase) Velev was forced to close down almost immediately after launching into early access, one more victim of this year’s lack of industry funding for, well, anyone.
“We intended to keep the game free to play, but our game was shut down and we had to close the servers,” the devs wrote. “We’re truly sorry for the sudden announcement and for not being able to handle things more responsibly until the end.” Ah man.
Runner-up: Splitgate 2, whose founder had got up on the stage of SGF with a “make FPS great again” hat to announce the launch of the FPS, unlaunched and laid off workers before the end of July, so that game lasted only about six or so weeks. Oof.
Want to nominate another winner? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to check out our serious MMO awards while you’re at it, or skim through our past “winners”: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.