Sleeping Dogs F2P Spin-Off Triad Wars Closing
Later this month
Sleeping Dogs is a pretty fun open-world murder simulator, sending an undercover cop punching and kicking and sticking-heads-in-fansing around the Hong Kong underworld (have you played it?), but its follow-up was not really the game expected or wanted. Triad Wars [official site] took the city into a free-to-play online thingy, played solo but with asynchronous multiplayer where you build an empire while interfering with AI-controlled representations of other players' operations. It was not e.g. Sleeping Dogs 2. Soon it'll be nothing, as it's shutting down later this month without even leaving beta.
Developers United Front Games actually announced the closure last month, but at a time after we here had turned off the lights for the Christmas holiday and were already sneaking swigs from the cooking brandy. They explained the scrapping:
"Since the start of the Triad Wars Closed Beta this year, diligent Enforcers have run rampant through the streets of Hong Kong, killing rivals and building Empires. During this time we have gathered immense amounts of feedback, information, and data on the game. We've loved seeing how you’ve played Triad Wars but we know it wasn't right for many of you so we're letting you know today that we are going to close the beta and service on January 20th 2016 at 12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time."
That "we know it wasn't right for many of you" is a gentle, resigned way of saying "you didn't like it," I think, and makes me feel for the person who wrote that. Bless.
Anyway, another forum post declares "There will be some super exciting announcements coming in the New Year" from United Front. Maybe that's something more right for many of us e.g. Sleeping Dogs 2.
If you, like me, never really understood what Triad Wars even was, this dev livestream from early December may illuminate things a little:
