Hey guys, if you're new here maybe consider subscribing since it appears the KZfaq algorithm likes me a little bit and it helps me make more content like this. Also if you're interested here's a discord server in which I rarely use in case you want to join that! discord.com/invite/7g9D8WB4dm

I mean, it's completely normal for a single player game to lose most of its player base some time after the full release. The devs won't get more money even if all the players who bought the game are playing it forever.

Teardown is a pretty damn good game, and the original developer seemed pretty passionate about it. I played it in early access and haven't touched it since it released. Must of been a huge paycheck to sell off what seemed to be a passion project.

Saber interactive is known for making/buying good games, and then ruining them

They should’ve considered expanding to a multiplayer realm, thus allowing the game to enter a Gmod state of immortality

how can a singleplayer game be "dead", especially when it's complete. I'd understand if it was multiplayer because if there is no one in lobbies, you can't play the game. But with singleplayer, you can play it anytime, right now or even 10 years down the line.

I have 330 hours of teardown and I still find it fun. I dont need constant updates, all I need is for the game to remain on steam and for a small trickle of mods and I am complete. I have very elaborate and complex ragdoll battles in it.

Bit sad that teardown went from the cutting edge of gaming technology to a money grab with barely the amount of work that it deserves. Good video, I'm subbed now.

I'm not playing it because the game physically stopped working on my computer. It just comes up with a command prompt window and shuts itself down after a while.

I'm confused, because I've seen videos retelling a similar story, but I'm not sure why take the whole "this game is officially dead" angle. I agree that Teardown's change of hands is a turn for the worse, but the video keeps hammering on the game being "dead" and even showing that "0 players" graphic. In 2022, the year Teardown got out of Early Access, it got ~3000-5000 player peaks each month. As of February, the peak number of players is 4291, with other months hovering around the 4000 player mark. It feels like trying to bury the game even though the player count stays relatively the same.

Teardown sold out to a bigger company, now it has Paid DLC..... shocker seems to be the same story over and over again, small indie dev, makes a good game, gets offer from big corporation, sells out, game now has paid DLC, or paid cosmetics, or a battlepass or other things no one ever asked for..... this is what happens when greed takes over

i know why tuxedo labs sold out to saber- the paycheck was probably massive, but i'll never forgive them for it. they took and ruined a perfect game and now it's slowly becoming the very thing that happened to snowrunner and the other messes of the AAA industry.

Some good news: "The only thing that really changed is that Saber has been removed as an entity between Embracer and Tuxedo Labs, and by doing that Tuxedo Labs is being handed back all creative control and decision making around Teardown." -Dennis Gustafsson on Embracer Group selling Saber Interactive, Teardown Discord. Saber is basically removed completely from development now, and to make things even better, a few of the Teardown developers have teased what could be a multiplayer update in the Teardown discord, showcasing third person player models and animated characters.

Got teardown but a few weeks ago, beat the campaign and started enjoying a few mods and challenges. I had no idea why there was so much hate to Saber, but now I see. Either way, the game is still solid and is worth playing.

Whenever Saber gets involved, you can be sure prices will go up while development will just stop. At this stage I just have them marked "ignore" on the store. They've killed too many games I liked.

There was so much potential in this, and the future of what could have become a cult franchise. It is always about money. Every time you think someone has some respect and dignity, until they are offered enough money.

it took you a real long time to just say "a company bought the rights, updates slowed, they sold dlc", like who cares theres still a whole sandbox to mess with and practically endless community content to explore

when saber interactive bought the game,it was dead

We need to preserve teardown in case everything goes downhill

Saber is owned by Embracer Group so one could assume this was the fate of the game.

I loved the atmosphere at the first playthrough. Felt real

"Embracer group" Well there goes that.

You ever think that players fell off because they finished the game?

Just want to point out: when they did the price increase from 20$ to 30$ (a 50% increase), they WITHOUT WARNING disabled regional pricing, the game in my country went from 38BRL to 90BRL, almost a 200% increase, very sneaky and scummy behavior

There are currently 2,706 people playing Teardown, from a peak of 8339, making it currently the 264th most played game on Steam. It currently has more players than Total War Attila (2698), Skyrim (2652) and Frostpunk (2,402). Far Cry 6 has 1,315 players, from a peak of 20,080. The Dead Space remake has 898 players, from a peak of 30,925. Robocop Rogue City has only got 286 players, from a peak of 4,971. All released in 2023. Teardown is FAR from dead.

They tried to do like landlords, buy the house, raise the rent. Turns out that's stupid because 1. This isn't a captive market like how housing is limited because of zoning (technically land too) so there's other games to play, and 2. Everybody who owned the game already didn't have to buy it over and over. The DLC is stupid but not the worst, but raising the base game is stupid because it means the modding community has less desire to exist: all the friends they would want to try to get into the game are now more likely to be turned off from a higher price tag.

I played it for around 110 hours, know almost every somewhat popular mod and maps in workshop. I just need something more out of this game. Maybe some vehicle NPCs to fight or race. I know it already has those but they are too simple to call them real NPCs. I will play it if something new groundbraking gets added to it.

honestly whenever i'm depressed or pissed off, i love lashing out all that stress onto teardown, destroying entire maps for hours. it's like a game version of a rage room lol

It should be noted that the guy who literally broke up the Beetles of game dev, Id Software, Tim Willits, who also claims to have "invented deathmatch" years after it was already made, is the Chief Creative Officer of Saber Interactive. Multiple members of Id Software have referred to him (without directly naming him) as a "snake in the grass" that poisoned the entire work culture for his own personal gain. It's so controversial it's literally on his wikipedia page. And that's just ONE of their key management at Saber.

I didn't know about the DLC. But 2 issues. The bumped up price and the DLC prices. The price change is almost as bad as Quake 3 Live's time on Steam. When Quake 3 Live first launched it had it's own website and everything to go with it. Then they migrated to Steam and everyone could claim their copy. Then once the original site was taken offline they put a price on the game. Then they reverted back to free. Quake 3 Live went from free to Steam to pay to free. The people who paid were the unlucky ones. I'm one of the fortunate players who started before it moved to Steam.

Its a shame this video has so little views. Its very well made and a great essay on this game. Hope your video and channel blows up!

So beautiful I started to Tear up 🥲

I AM STILL PLAYING IT

I miss back in late 2020 and early 2021, before the Workshop came out and you had to have a degree in astro-engineering in order to install mods. I remember when the A-10 strike mod was the most popular weapon, and when the Workshop DID come out, and everyone rushed to upload their mods to it. I remember when Spencer Johnson's "Honey I Shrunk" map came out and everyone thought it was the coolest thing ever. I hate how I keep living long enough to see everything I love go to shit in real time.

You don't have to keep playing a single game forever you know.

"why is nobody playing it anymore?" 25+ thousand players weekly: we are playing it

This is equivalent to saying that no one plays *insert name of old/new game*

I think a thing that helps this game is a youtuber played it a lot and the game gained a lot of attention. He then finished the campaign played some mod videos here and there and would leave it eventually coming back only when the wild west DLC came back which is around the time when the game started gaining popularity again

If I had one gripe about teardown is it’s over reliance on these 1 minute strategy missions. I went in thinking the game was all about relaxing and fun ways to, I dunno, TEARDOWN buildings? It was a stress simulator instead. That’s my take at least.

teardown is one of my favourite games of all time. it's a simple and humble indie game focused on voxels, creativity, and realistic destruction in many, many forms, and it's perfect for me. i caught wind of it when it was first teased, and i loved it ever since

I'm really getting sick of people judging a singleplayer games "health" based upon the number of steam players playing it. If we apply this logic to some classic games like Deus Ex or Kotor those games must be just completely dead failures right?

"Why is no one playing it" -3,800 players in game as of writing this

2k for a game that came out 2 years ago is pretty damn good. And actually is a lot better then games that actually did flop But yeah the buyout definitely hurt the game a lot. But with console release and the paid dlc’s it’s extremely likely interest will come back to the game as long as the dlc’s are really freaking good

I loved the idea of this game, but I was never a big fan of that 1 minute run gameplay and never beat the campaign. I found it more of a pain and was overly restrictive to where it felt like some missions had a mandatory path, instead of being able to play more loosely. It's not the kind of gameplay I wanted from a sandbox like this. Without the campaign, the sandbox mode was fun enough but just aimlessly destroying things can only hold your attention for so long. I even did get into modding the game for a while, and had a map with a lot of custom objects in progress (I was making an SMB1 themed map, with working warp pipes and such), but I never got around to finishing it.

short answer: new company bought the game and is releasing expensive dlcs. people no like.

I remember when I couldn't wait for the teardown to come out

Teardown isn't dead. It's just done! Some games have a finite amount of content.

1. Game looks good 2. Demo received well 3. Many people wishlist 4. Developer puts a lot of money in after seeing the response 5. Launch day 6. People are watching Vtubers stream it instead of buying it themselves 7. Company has to lay off its custodians due to loss of profits from Vtuber fans 8. Office gets too messy to work in We all know it and we're not allowed to say it, but I'm willing to risk getting banned by saying outright what we're all thinking. It's the Vtubers.

This game was an INSANE tech demo with a 'campaign' slapped on top

Listen, this is a problem that has been creeping up since the Zoomer generation sort of started using Steamcharts and concurrent player base or constant updates as equaling the success and health of a game. Why is nobody playing a game with infinite potential and replayability? Because people have already played the heck out of it and have moved on to other gamees. When I think of all the games I've played in my life. I loved each one, played them a ton, some have impacted me in many great ways personally, and I always revisit them. I don't play them constantly. That be boring everything has an ending and just because a game reached it's apex in players doesn't mean people will not enjoy the game in the future. As long as a game sells well and is enjoyed by many people - that's the metric of success you got to look at.

According to Steam Charts it had a 24-hr peak of 4k players as compared to the all time peak of 8k placing it around the 300th spot in the most played games currently, 2 positions below Fallout New Vegas, or around 200th spot at 24-hr peak, rougly around FarCry 5

That outro mention of the subscribers could not have been more perfect. It's quite annoying when creators go over the top with it, so just keep doing things the way you are. Looking forward to future videos.

I think what I crave from Teardown mostly is missions. I'm not sure if custom missions exist, but damn is it fun to complete those heists.

Such is life when your game is more tech demo than game.

It takes four minutes of your seven minute video to even explain what the "controversy" is, which essentially boils down to "they're charging for expansions." The game is already 100% feature complete. It's a 12 hour campaign normally and double that if you're going for 100%. The paid DLC is totally fine in that regard. Tuxedo Labs is allowed to be compensated for their work. Not to mention there's an endless treasure trove of mods. Charging for extra DLC was the norm several years ago and is, in fact, very consumer friendly. Player numbers are irrelevant for a singleplayer game. Not every game needs to be a live service multiplayer game.

they havent realized that people are porting dlc's to the game's workshop, meaning that everyone can have them for free, so saber interactive isnt making much money on them

ive been slowly heartbroken by teardown's descent to complete boredom for me. it's a shame

Bro I felt like watching a big youtuber and then realized you have only 751 subs, underrated as hell, good job man.

It's weird to say so confidently nobody is playing a game when pirating is a thing, and you can't know if people are playing a pirated game for obvious reasons

Well, I wouldn't say Teardown is "dead". I do feel like it's dying out a bit (and this is coming from someone with 800+ hours in this game), but it definitely isn't from the optional DLCs that are of mediocre quality. Also, the $30 isn't for just one DLC, it's a "Season Pass", which means it's for 5 DLCs, it's still a bit scummy but not as much as you appeared make it out to be, although I do understand your concern. In my opinion, one thing you should've covered was the controversial 1.5 update which had some issues when it released and was met with heavy criticisms and several protest mods from the community, but fortunately most of the issues have been fixed. I also should mention that the player numbers of the console port of Teardown do not show on Steam, meaning that there theoretically could be more total players than there were at the launch of the game, although that is unlikely, but there definitely are more people playing Teardown than Steam says. There are also some tweets made by the developer of Teardown suggesting that they're working on multiplayer, which may bring this game back into relevancy. But besides all that, the quality of your script is great, and the editing is pretty good. If you keep it up, you'll get big eventually.

Single player games dont die.

I don't understand. It is a single-player game. I am sure next to no one is currently playing Panzer Dragoon Saga or Z (old saturn games) right now, but why call them "dead"? Why call any single-player game dead? Why care how many other people are currently playing it? If you enjoy it and are recommended it, you can enjoy it to its fullest without anyone else. What is the point of noting this?

you mean to tell me that a game released and then people stopped playing it after a long amount of time?

Gotta say, the required timer on every mission was a setback for me. I stopped playing during release and only picked it up for modded maps once and again. They recently(?) added a way to alter that, but I just wish the campaign was focused more on destruction than a timer that just causes anxiety, lol.

Awesome video, you've got some great editing and you comment on the right things at the right times to keep it interesting. Keep it up man!

The problem with the idea of a game like teardown is that it kind of requires a multidisciplinary skill set. You need to know physics and computer science intimately in order to deliver on the promises of the developer.

I’m still holding out hope for a Teardown 2 with half size voxels and better physics.

saber owns another game called snowrunner. same ish deal. base game is mid and anything new is a dlc. they also limit the mods you have on console, a single truck can take up 70% of the mod space. so you're forced into buying the dlc, even if it just for the map or vehicle. basic things like jeeps are locked behind its own dlc.

TLDW: the original company got bought by Saber, who raised the price by $10 amd advertised overly expensive DLC missions. It's a single player game, so it can't die, meaning if you still want to play it then play it. Nothing has changed.

Once a tech demo always a tech demo Also single player one and done puzzle game The only thing this had going for it is a singular graphical gimmick

This video better blow up. Great video my guy, keep up the amazing work!

Really well edited video! Keep up the good work. Actually didn't know the game was bought. Have only seen it on youtube, you inspired me to consider buying it when its on sale.

I hate saber interactive they kinda ruined spintires in snow runner mods are the only reason I still play the game

its a singleplayer game that has left the public consciousness, it really isn't surprising that it doesn't have a huge playerbase.

Excellent video essay that deserves more attention!

Dude great video but please lower the volume of the background music, it’s hard to hear you

many games have died due to greedy corporations ruining things.

EMBRACER!! Everywhere I go it’s like im one step behind those miscreants, as they gobble up and ruin developers left and right!

I didn't know about dlcs. For me it was just one of those good games you go through once, then mess with mods for a bit and uninstall. Then if you're really not quenched yet you csn get dlcs. Sounds fair

My son plays this all the time. He loves destroying things... putting out fires... modding it and fighting zombies or flying super monsters with wizard powers. The perfect child friendly game.

I had no idea about the Saber Interactive acquisition, it’s a shame to hear how often this happens with them.

the thing i never like in teardown is that all mission are very similar to one another, get a sertent emount of object under 1 min and once and repeat until you beat the game

Teardown is a game that while campaigns completed, I take some months off from playing it and start from the beginning to troubleshoot through it between the things I recall and dont. I wouldnt say its a dead game, its just a completed game. Its not something ill ever not find satisfying picking back up to play and watch things explode and fall apart in juicy ways.

Honestly as far as publishers ruining games go this wasn’t that bad, sure the game being raised by 10 dollars sucks but this game seems worth it on the technology used alone, the 30$ paid dlcs are ridiculous prices but at the very and I mean VERY least they’re optional to buy, it’s just hard to ruin a single player game

How do you have only 500 subscribers? Somebody with like 200X your subscribers would make a video with this quality Also I'm thinking of buying teardown now due to this video, the normal campaigns would still be good

the OG teardown campaign is top notch Nothing beats the rush at the end of 40+ minutes of careful route setup when you have just 1 to get through it all and collect everything

I will say that the publisher seems a bit greedy, but also not every game can last forever with endless content and updates. You start to run into issues with bloat and too many changes. Why do you think so many people prefer to play OSRS to this day? Or beta versions of minecraft? If Teardown is to just continue forever, there is a good chance it will fizzle out and die rather than being this cool standalone game that everyone really enjoyed for what it was and looks back on fondly.

Ive put 150 hours into Teardown, and Im gonna be honest I haven't even rinished the campaign. It was just plain fun. But the community took a hit with the new updates came out changed a bunch of gameplay aspects because of the console update.

OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! The for profit videogame company is selling DLC... FOR A PROFIT?!!!!?!?!?!?!?

When a company comes up yo ass un-invited and wants to buy it, it’s cuz they clearly see your game’s potential. No matter the amount they offer you, don’t accept. If anything, you could eventually get more money than they gave you in the long run.

I feel like this game could've used a better campaign or better yet... no campaign AT ALL. Let players be creative (about how they destroy things) themselves from the start. It should've been the USP of this game from the very start. I was really interested on the potential that this game had, it could've been the next Garry's mod, Roblox or Minecraft but as soon as I heard that it offered a campaign that ONLY allowed you to play 60 seconds of it for each stage I got turned off immediately and never bought it or even pirated it. They should've marketed it more as sandbox (which I'm aware that it is but that's not my point) than a game with a story or campaign and should've focused on multiplayer from the very start instead.

In my opinion, having Paid DLC isn't the end of the world. It's still scummy, but it doesnt ruin the experience for me. It's not like they locked existing content behind a pay wall. Yet.

When I first played teardown I spent about 2 hours just resetting and taking down the beginning barn with the vehicles and tools just given lmao I had no idea that they were bought out though, I always just assumed they kinda forgot about the game and the popularity just slowly decreased like most things

I wish I was never told I had been using the phrase "begs the question" wrong this whole time.

tear down would be such a good game if they made a multiplayer zombie mod, or a counterstrike styled game mode. and reduced the blockiness of the engine

I stopped playing because of the engine limitations. On large/complex maps my PC with a 32 thread CPU and 24G GPU would chug with only 14% CPU utilization.

The old devs that created teardown: we love our players and we update our game a lot Saber: player=💰💰💰💰 Updates? What are those?

Game has 3k players, that's a lot more than most of the garbage that bloats steam nowadays.

The campaign is good, but honestly, I think the whole "heist" schtick gets old pretty fast, and there really isn't any other mods to add more variety. It really needed more variety in it's missions, with actual NPCs and enemies.

I've owned Teardown since the week it was released. It's still a great game, I go back every now and then when I'm bored and wanna kill 30 minutes