Did you know that the Crucible Amazon launch was today? A new free-to-play FPS game published by Amazon Games has arrived on Steam today, but all of the numbers suggest that Crucible hasn’t had the warmest reception.
Let’s start with Twitch viewership. At the time of writing, 34,000 people are watching Crucible on Twitch with only seven streams featuring over 1,000 viewers. While the game hit a peak of 120,000 viewers yesterday, the viewer count has since crated and seems to be struggling to climb back up.
ALSO: Crucible is Overwatch and League of Legends’ battle royale baby
Then, there’s the matter of the game’s performance on Steam. Although the Crucible Amazon launch debuted as a free-to-play game on Steam and is currently at #2 for Top-Selling free-to-play games, it currently holds a “Mixed” user rating and has had several issues raised in the reviews.
“The gameplay isn’t the most polished here and doesn’t exactly feel the smoothest,” stated one negative review. “Combined with questionable high latency server issues that persisted with me despite a [late-night] patch for this game, and some frame dipping due to poor optimization, it doesn’t help. The map definitely feels a little too large[…] It’s clear to me that this map was primarily designed for the BR game mode first and the MOBA Shooter second.”
“This game has identity issues,” another negative review said. “It feels almost like it was intended to be a BR game and they swapped to an overwatch style but figured, ‘we’ve gone too far to scrap the map.'”
Aside from the Mixed Steam reviews on the Crucible Amazon launch, there’s also the matter of advertising and attention. As some have pointed out, it seems that Amazon just kind of chucked this game out into the world without any noticeable marketing buildup.
“What… is going on?” inquired gaming industry tweeter and PR guru Ryan @Toadsanime Brown. “Why is Amazon not going hard with their first major game release on launch day?”
Aside from the lack of advertising, another particularly strange omission is the lack of any kind of Twitch Prime benefits for the game. You’d think that Amazon would use its gaming platform to get more people to check it out, but the current Twitch Prime lineup shows absolutely nothing for Crucible.
We can’t say for certain whether the Crucible Amazon launch is a misstep or a subtle soft launch designed to sort out early problems. Either way, the dev team seems to be working hard to fix some of the most pressing issues with the game. Hopefully, they’ll be able to turn things around and attract a bigger audience. For now, you can play Crucible for free on Steam — maybe you’ll find something you like!
