Seems that players have been deserting PlayStation 5’s exclusive racing/vehicle combat game Destruction AllStars. In a dev update posted to the Destruction AllStars Subreddit, developer Lucid Games shared a raft of upcoming features for the game, with one of them being online bots.
In the update, the developer says that the game has peak times and low times for online matchmaking. It would seem that the low times outweigh the peak times though as the developer explains that AI bots will fill the gap when real, human players are missing.
The only exception to this is the competitive game mode called Blitz. The developer says that this will never feature AI bots.
From full price game to free on PS Plus
Destruction AllStars was originally supposed to be a full-price game, retailing at £69.99/$69.99. You could even pre-order a physical copy of the game for a while from various retailers. It was supposed to launch alongside the PS5 last November.
Sony delayed the game however in October last year and instead made it available free on PlayStation Plus for two months from February this year. The only reason given at the time was that they wanted as many people as possible to play the game. It is reasonable to assume that not many people took up Sony’s offer of pre-ordering the game at 70 quid.
It certainly looks like the game has been in a bit of a freefall since it launched in February. Even being free on PS Plus couldn’t really help maintain the player base.
Destruction AllStars ended up not being particularly well received by critics and players alike. With the game getting a fairly low 62 on Metacritic.
If you didn’t manage to add the game to your library whilst it was free, you’ll need to fork out £17.99 on the PS Store to play it. Something which probably isn’t helping the number of people playing the game.
It probably won’t be long until Sony turns it into a free-to-play game, or closed it down completely. Which is a bit of a shame. With some changes, the game could have become a new Twisted Metal.
