Babylon’s Fall’s Season 2 update is being extended to “re-evaluate” the game’s future

Square Enix and PlatinumGames have announced they’re extended season two of Babylon’s Fall from three months to six in order to “re-evaluate the game’s future operating roadmap”. The game’s second season is still due to launch next week on May 31st, but will now run through November 29th instead of the originally planned date of August 22nd, the devs said in a statement on the game’s Hanging Garden website. They also promised more info on season two in a live stream “coming soon”.

Season two of Babylon’s Fall will introduce a new part of the campaign called ‘The Light Of Aaru’, as well as a new fact and a new pistol weapon type. It will also see the arrival of a paid battle pass – a game whose base version is still priced at £60/$60, and whose concurrent player count on PC has peaked at just 78 so far in the month of May. Counts have been steadily falling, too.

Season two’s extension is credited to player feedback after the game’s damp squib of a launch. PlatinumGames and Square Enix realized fairly early on that there were significant issues, launching a survey that concentrated on garnering players’ opinions on the graphics. A week later, PlatinumGames announced that continued service for Babylon’s Fall was not in danger and that they were already working on season three, with content for season two almost complete.

Babylon’s Fall’s game directors Kenji Saito and Takahisa Sugiyama touched on issues with the game’s graphics in to interview posted on Square Enix’s site last week. They say improvements are coming in the season two update. Sugiyama said that the development team had not been able to do enough testing on the graphics before the game launched, and they had not been aware of the “visibility aspect and how that could create stress for players repeatedly playing an action game over a long period ”.

When it launched in March, Ed called the game “a live disservice” in his Babylon’s Fall review. Some players are still digging it though, particularly Babylon’s Fall enthusiast Dashiell Wood. I spoke to Dash earlier this month after he’d stood up to claim the title of Babylon’s Fall’s only concurrent player. “I suppose the appeal is in its unpopularity,” he told me. “Despite being an MMO, no one is really talking about it and I don’t imagine many people have even played it.”

If you want to try Babylon’s Fall for yourself then there’s a demo on Steam. You can also see the full list of what’s coming in season two on the Babylon’s Fall site.