Metro Rivals Development Suspended

Not trying to start an argument or try and say somebody's wrong, but i am curious about those of you that like the underground trains and routes, don't you find them dull at all, i mean it's mostly just driving through blackness with the odd stop, is it the challenge to stay on time that drives you, i am genuinely curious about this.

 

Don't forget all the people who want Eurostar London-Paris and drive through the channel tunnel

 

I don’t really like them, it was just an idea of literally anything that would be more enticing for the community you’re depending on to actually support a new project.

With Matt previously discussing how unsustainable underground lines are for TSW, it would be a good idea to put a team together & focus solely on that, especially given how lighting is in TSW, it would have been a great thing to try out in a UE5 environment.

 

London-Paris isn’t a fully tunnelled route

 

No kidding

 

Actually alot underground/subway/metro lines have signifigant surface section so its not all in a tunnel.

New York is a good example pretty much any line outside the Isle of Manhattan is pretty much surface or elevated. And the scenery density big because of it being such an urban area.

So its not all just dark and gloomy.

Montreal is an exception but that is because their rolling stock uses rubber tyres so they would not be efficient in winter on the surface, sonit needs to be 100% underground and yes would not be as fun I would think.

 

Metro routes are not only underground. The trains itself are not dull too, I think you can compare them with S-bahn / commuter trains, only driving at some lower speed. So I actually like to see some metro routes or a dedicated metro game.

 

I mean a year-old financial statement is hardly current- i'll be interested to see the new figures for year ending March 31st 2026. The overall state of the games industry is in a much worse position than it was a year ago and while it's clear that concurrent player numbers are an imperfect metric, WoS doesn't show any signs of being a big seller- certainly not breaking out into a wider gaming audience.

Just saying that cancelling a game that was due to launch in a few months and laying off a bunch of staff is not a sign of healthy finances. Not every project is successful but the timing and seemingly advanced state of development at the time of cancellation are troubling signs imo.

Fwiw i absoutely do not hope for DTG to go bankrupt- besides the awful collateral damage to their employees, it's far from clear another dev would step into their shoes anytime soon, if ever. I want to keep playing train sims!

I just think those crowing "i don't care this won't affect me since i only play TSW" are perhaps burying their heads in the sand a little bit.

 

You comment makes little sense, a London-Paris route isn’t really the same as an underground route

 

The NY Subway tunnels are also quite spacious even cavernous, compared to the likes of Bakerloo and the other deep surface London tube lines. Almost a subterranean architectural world of its own.

 

i wondering if they have game back up incase they later return to it.

 

To be fair I think it is a bit of a fair fetched notion. Both JT & AAS are in the process of bringing the largest scopes of content we’ve seen yet, hardly the sign of a sudden death.

I think DTG has made some strategic errors lately though which is perhaps why first party content has died down & also why Rivet seemed to have taken control of in house development, but they may just go back to a more stable hand on TSW, now that Thomas, Viewapp & Rivals are done with.

I just hope that the one thing they’ve learned here is that they have a huge responsibility to console users in particular. Third parties can’t test content on console, which is pretty insane that they are essentially blindly developing for those platforms. They also made their bed with wanting complete control over new content, so they need to get used to the idea that they are responsible for all the things that control entails.

 

As this is suspended, not cancelled, could development resume at some point in the future perhaps?

 

Indeed, the demo clip seemed to show a fairly advanced build, both in terms of the game environment, rolling stock and even the Wipeout style boosters. Which is why I’m still wondering if external factors like MTA played a part.

 

The most recent one is from Q3 last year, so about 4 Months old.

 

Looks can be deceiving to be fair, I suspect gameplay direction was a big issue. A comparison here may be Ark Raiders, they did a really interesting 3 part documentary on the development of the game & within it they discussed essentially building several ‘full’ games that they couldn’t release, because beyond the world & features they’d created there was just no path for a meaningful gameplay loop, eventually leading to the incredibly successful release they had, which was essentially done by taking the project in another direction.

When you look at Rivals, you have to ask how on earth you evolve a gang territory dispute game, into a train game & then have those things come together to create a gameplay loop that people are interested in. Either you make a criminal enterprise game or you make a version of Crazy Taxi on rails, but even then, the biggest thing in gaming these days is monetisation. Good luck doing that with whoever you’re marketing that gender mashup toward. They may aswell have hired more teams to just pump out more TSW content, but I guess the goal here was diversifying their portfolio.

 

I don't believe I ever said a sudden death but the business world moves quickly for sure.

Don't forget that financial statements are backwards-looking by definition- could business conditions be markedly different between the beginning of that reporting period in April 2024 (for the year ending 3/31/25) and now? A cursory look at global, financial, and gaming industry news during that time would suggest it's very possible. So, we have to consider that maybe their own internal forecasts aren't looking too rosy.

And, remember DTG don't control their own fate anymore- Focus will have targets for them to meet and we have no way of knowing that. All we can do is try to read the tea leaves.

Hopefully you're right though! Very good points on console testing btw- it's a terrible situation currently.

 

I didn't say that at all

 

Yeah it wasn’t really a direct response to you, in the end I do agree there’s likely trouble but it’s more just a lack of direction than anything else. A lot of companies on the back of Covid just seem to be under the illusion they can have unlimited growth, try to push for it & in the end push customers away.

I certainly don’t think TSW is in ‘oh LOVE’ levels of trouble though, they just need to calm down with the greed & stabilise production.

 

Can't blame DTG for trying to diversify, it's a good business strategy but it doesn't always work out for many, many reasons.

I guess the focus will be on the titles that are performing and, from a purely selfish point of view, I hope that means the MR team are absorbed into the TSW team so we can have a greater choice of content. Plus, some experimental elements may have proven useful for the development of TSW.

Nor do I see anything DTG have done with TSW as "greed". A drive for a good profit margin is what keeps businesses afloat and will keep TSW alive. While we may not always agree with DTGs strategy or have other gripes, I remain convinced that Matt and the team want to make all of their titles as good as possible. But some issues aren't resolved overnight. If they were AI would be a competent alternative to humans and I'd be heading out to the studio shortly in my self-driving car.

 

Someone who knows about tax law can correct me as I’m going off of what US based movie studios have been up to, so they’ll film a movie and have it pretty much complete and then cancel it, write it off as a loss for a tax break. If Metro Rivals was projected to make less than it cost to produce it seems like it would be beneficial for DTG to cancel the project to effectively get back all they spent as a tax refund as opposed to making a loss by releasing it?

 

LOL 1st thing i learned running a business, get an accountant cuz that stuffs scary

 

This is quite an interesting development with MR and not something I expected but as said it could possibly be good for TSW but then on the financial side you have to wonder how much money they already put into it just for it to get suspended? Honestly it never really interested me as a game but I feel for the people working on it that this is going to affect

It makes you wonder if there is anything else up DTGs sleeve? Are they focusing on some stuff for WOS? Because that has real potential to be something amazing but it's a bit empty and lifeless at the moment for me personally but has some great concepts. Love the shunting puzzle idea, love the stories and there's potential for the timetable to be special!

On the TSW side third party's are basically carrying in in my opinion. I think there's a lot to be made from TSW if DTG could step up their game and be a little more like TSG, JT and Firefly. Don't just release content for the sake of it but put the time and detail into making it great. Before Rivet took over the UK routes DTGs were actually getting quite good and there was a definite increase in quality.

 

That’s certainly possible. I don’t know if they can get all the dev costs back but it would certainly go down as a loss and reduce their tax bill.

 

I hope not.
Focus Entertainment are a big company with many talented developers who have experience in sims, hope they pass the torch to one of them.

 

This is pretty much how it works. Cut your loss and write off all the accrued hours. Still a loss, but also tax deductible.

 

Firefly tested their route on Xbox, as Xbox has a beta branch. However they have no way to test it on PS5 as PS doesn't have something like that. From what I understand, DTG port it over to console and they can test it on dev kits and in case of Xbox on the consoles itself.

 

Older gamers want realism.
Younger gamers want GTA 6 and Forza Horizon 6.

My two lads are 9 and 15 years-old, and both said Metro Rivals looked boring. I don't think either would mention Metro Rivals to their classmates at school, for fear of being laughed out of the classroom.

 

no, please god, NO!

 

Vern, the "1000 players" is the maximum ever recorded playing simultaneously, worldwide, and on Steam alone.The number of copies sold across all platforms is therefore vastly over 1000 as no game in history has had 100% of its players online at once.

There are almost 700 reviews for the title just on Steam. Considering industry estimations are that about 1-5% of players leave reviews, even taking the higher figure of 5% would mean 14,000 copies sold. That's still less than the estimated sales volumes shown on third-party sites like PlayTracker and Gamalytic, which are showing numbers around the 20,000 mark.

If you take into account the fact that many of the purchases will be for children who are unlikely to write up reviews, and whose parents will mostly have no interest in doing so, I think it's safe to use a "purchase-to-review" figure of 3%.. That bumps up the number of copies sold to around 23,000. Using the same average of £32, that's a sales volume of £736,000 on Steam a little more than £32,000.

Then you have to factor in sales on Epic Games, Xbox, PS5 and the upcoming Switch and Switch 2 versions, all of which combined typically make up 65% of sales for arcade / casual games like WoS. A figure of 65,000 copies acrross all platforms is therefore not an unreasonable assumption, particularly given the amount of positive attention the game received on social media at launch. That's 2 million quid into DTG's account, minus various distribution and licensing fees.

I'm pretty sure DTG have recouped their development costs on WoS, assuming it took a team of 15-20 devs and artists about a year to develop what is essentially a TSW mod / total conversion.

JB

 

Exactly. I'm not interested in, say, the Victoria line which is completely underground. But the Central line, or the Metropolitan line? Definitely.

 

The Northern Line pre ATO would be very nice too.

 

I like to LOVE on Thomas (nothing against the original show though) and had planned on defending the "double digit" figures, as they could be explained away by the primary user base being in school but at least according to Steam DB (which granted only looks at Steam and not consoles) puts it's busiest periods during the night UK time meaning it seems to be more popular overseas.

That said, the number of players has dropped off massively considering it's been out for two days shy of a month, yes consoles will have a much bigger player base (generally kiddies will be on consoles rather than proper gaming rigs) but it should still be somewhat concerning.

Anyway moving back to Metro Rivals, well it's a shame it got canned though personally I am indifferent and would not have been remotely interested in it. On the accounting front it is an interesting one, yes they can get a tax write-off for a lot of it's development costs but since they waited until the new financial year to announce its cancellation it means we can't see those figures until they are published next year, roughly November/December time...

To be honest I was a little worried at how quiet the forums had become in terms of involvement of DTG personnel but at least Alex appeared to share the update notes. If DTG were to fold, I'd hope it was after the JT Preston-Crewe route dropped as I can live without a TSW7 and of course, we are still waiting for patches that are in QA so it's not like we'd miss out on them...

 

How you made the jump from 23,000 units sold on Steam to 2,000,000 across all platforms I don't know.
The likelihood is that the game has sold maybe 100,000 units across all platforms, with a net ASP (average sale price, so after platform fees, taxes, chargebacks etc) is more like $18. So at a push the game might have generated in the range of $1.8m - which after development costs, marketing and licensing fees may have managed to break-even.

Even with reusing existing TSW tech the game will have tied up a lot of employees over a solid amount of time.

 

Alot of Subway / Metro routes tend to go outside the dark gloomy tunnels. NYC Subway is a great example of this. Some lines your above the roads and streets for half of the journey which can allow for really great views. The other half is tunnel with stations lol. The Berlin U Bahn is the same

 

In the Netherlands you have an overground metro line between Rotterdam and The Hague. There is also an overground metro line from Rotterdam to Hoek van Holland beach (Hoek van Holland translates to Corner of Holland). Both lines where train lines in the past, but converted to metro lines. Both are quite interesting lines, especially the line to the beach. I would love to see those line in TSW or a separate game.

 

The Chicago "L" being another great example, only one or two lines have an underground section and that is barely a couple of miles long but the rest is either at grade or elevated. Pity that CTA won't license out to TSW, I'd give a heck of a lot for the Green Line to be available :/

 

Yes I got sidetracked while writing my post and indeed went from talking about copies sold to pounds earned... And then lost track of what I was on about I shall go and edit it. The 2 million I mentioned was meant to be pounds earned, assuming Steam sales made up 35% of all sales. God knows what made me carry on and multiply that by the sale price to then come up with a figure of 32 million quid without so much as an inkling of doubt DTG would be happy!

JB

 

Tyne & Wear Metro is a great one for this.

 

I think comparing WOS to TSW doesn't really work in this instance. I would guess that WOS will be bigger on consoles just purely because of the ages and more casual player base it's targeted at. But then DTG did a lot with MR publicity wise and all sorts and that's just disappeared.

I haven't bought WOS because we don't know where things will be going, is it going to stay a blank canvas like SOS or PFR and go the way of Metro Rivals where one day we'll spend our money on it and suddenly be told development is suspended?

I think it's hard to trust DTG when things fly out out of nowhere and past history with the TSW DLC (again steam traction situation left us all high and dry and isn't even acknowledged by anyone now). Look at how much PR and work went into the bits we saw of MR and now it's just gone.

If they get out ahead of the uncertainty and just say "This is here to stay" or "We want to focus on TSW and WOS" I think it would go a long way.

 

Not tempted by the Waterloo & City then?

If we're going large, then it has to be The District. All of it, with a mix of D78 and S7.

 

What is this monstrosity? I think I’ll try this at the weekend for fun. I fire up PCSX2 from time to time.

 

WoW comes to mind, a game which has concurrent player peaks around 200,000 which of course is far short of the daily unique logins of 1.2 million, and which also peaked at 12 million concurrently active subscriptions.

 

It's kind of ironic when you think about it.

The MTA demanded that DTG modified the M3A and M7A units, because they were scared of people stealing subway trains.... Then DTG decide to make a game about subway train racing.

Maybe DTG are worried that Metro Rivals could damage future licencing agreements or scare away train operating companies?

If somebody mods a Freightliner branded class 70 into Metro Rivals, it's not going to look good wrecking at 120mph.

 

You say that, but we got to bare in mind, TSW struggles even on 9th gen machines at this point, and it never really played all that well on 8th gen home machines. Cutting that down even weaker than what TSW1/2020 routes were meant to run on, with a studio notoriously not good at optimizing isn't exactly promising.

Agree, people keep talking up the numbers, but even using something like WoW as a metric, realistically how many people are playing per day? I honestly don't think current consoles will be much more than that 1/3 figure, Xbox & Sony really don't aim for that young of a customer base contrary to what the more out of touch crowd on here would say. (Just saying, their main flagship franchises are M-rated, feel like people miss that when saying they're for "young people")

All's fine till it suddenly isn't, ask anyone in 2008 if they thought Microsoft would shut down the flight sim team by that time next year you'd probably have been looked at funny. They showed off MSTS2 regular, and were providing development updates on it up to the month it got canned I believe. Looking more recently, Naughty Dog spent 7 years on a Last of Us live service title, only for it to get canceled because they couldn't support both that and their single player projects.

So I just can't agree with that, if you keep up with the industry you'll see some utterly insane amounts of time and effort flushed down the train that are much more insane than what's going on in TSW right now.

I mean yeah, it could, there's been cases of games like The Last Guardian which have gotten released after long periods of being put on hiatus. That said, on the flip-side, there are many games that also just never get brought back out. MSTS2 is actually a good example of that, to this day it has never been officially cancelled to my knowledge, it was always "postponed". That said, realistically would Microsoft even continue off the old MSTS2 build if they did suddenly bring it back? Not likely 15 years on from when it last was in development.

I was watching Sam's Trains video on the recently Accurascale/Heljan merger happenings, and brought up data that was mentioned in this video.


(The financial section is marked, should be easy to find if you just want to watch that bit)

And it's interesting, because the gest is that the only reason Heljan weren't technically in trouble was that their own stock was considered, which kept them in the black. But as pointed out, those are not much of a asset if they can't actually be sold off, which pretty clearly was a issue given their very mixed (To say the least) reputation as a company. So contrary to what they were trying to spin it as pretty clearly this was being done because Heljan likely weren't going to be around for that much longer if they were left on their own.

So yeah, I could easily believe that DTG are in some similar position, where they might seem ok on paper, but in reality would be in massive trouble down the line if they didn't sell out to someone. I certainly don't buy that they'd have sold off to Focus if DTG was in a health position to survive on their. To speculate myself a bit, game development is not cheap as is, and it only grows more expensive over time. I could easily see DTG make a similar determination to Heljan, where it's better to sell now and get help from a healthier company. As opposed to risk it on their own have the next TS completely kill the company, if it ends up having similar growing pains to TSW.

Something that could happen is Focus could see some other project that stands a much greater chance of making money needing staff. And in turn could be willing to toss aside on projects at DTG to have them be reassigned as a support studio. This happened to at least one studio under Activision, this is not a particularly crazy faith for a studio. Or alternatively, like with the FSX/MSTS2 team, they could just shift priorities, and shut down DTG whole sale if they determine TSW isn't reflective of their over all current vision.

There isn't a single "good business strategy", there's just business stratagy's, which depending on what you're doing may or may not be right for you. Diversity can mean having multiple cash cows to help support you, or alternatively having one project that does insanely well while you have teams work on other projects bringing in pennies. This video has been making the rounds in various circles, because they brought up one of their meetings. Where the gest was that they didn't see the value in porting their older titles, because something selling 100,000 units means nothing to the company on a grander scale.


(The clip is right at the very start of the video)

That sort of mindset is how you get companies like Nickelodeon or History Channel that notoriously would rather air constant reruns of singular shows. At a certain point it actual can make more sense to just focus in and double down on what makes money. Spreading out doesn't always make sense if you can't ensure your efforts are amounting to more than a few pennies.

 

They just need to make something like Euro Truck Simulator, but about trains—take a map of England, choose an appropriate scale, and give players a selection of locomotives so they can haul freight or carry passengers. I’m sure the game would find its niche.

 

as someone who lives very close to the rotterdam the hague metro line i can for sure say the line is interesting especially after the split where it goes to 3rd rail and into the tunnel bc the old railway actually went over the a20 highway and that whole viaduct in the streets where the tracks used to be is still there tho quite abandoned sadly also dont forget about the old zoetermeer railway which did a whole circle around the city to return to the same station 2 times