BattleBit Remastered is one of the year’s breakout hits, a low-poly Battlefield-style FPS big on the destruction and, most importantly for players, big on value. The game has quickly found an enormous audience, many of whom are delighted by the idea of a game with an upfront price that doesn’t subsequently nickel-and-dime them with a battle pass or DLC elements: you pays your money, you gets the whole thing.
The game has sold over two million copies in its first few weeks of release, and developer TheLiquidHorse took part in a fan Q&A to talk about BattleBit’s future. “This is just wild,” the developer said of the game’s success. “I don’t even think any one of us has realised what we actually have done now.”
One wag asks if there’s any bright orange Lamborghinis in the dev team’s future, given the money BattleBit must have made. But TheLiquidHorse says most of the cash is going straight back: “Majority of it will stay with the game, we will only take a small portion to make this a living now. I’m a big car enthusiast but sportscars will still remain a dream.”
Several questions were targeted towards DICE’s Battlefield series, and specifically what BattleBit delivers that, in recent years, fans feel Battlefield hasn’t. TheLiquidHorse commendably resisted the temptation to take any shots at the game that clearly inspired and underpins much of their own, instead choosing a more optimistic view of things. “We are just some newbies in this field,” said the developer. “[DICE] probably know things way better then we do. What happened in the last few years there wasn’t their fault, I think they would still be able to deliver an absolute stunner of a Battlefield if they would have the time and freedom.”
And Battlefield wasn’t the only inspiration. “Battlefield, Squad, Insurgency, HLL, Ace of Spades….,” said TheLiquidHorse, “basically anything FPS, they all have some great things to them.”
One player noted that medic is an overwhelmingly popular choice, in their opinion because the medic’s levelling progress is faster than other classes. “Yes, we will give all other roles a buff down the line and make them more viable in combat” agreed TheLiquidHorse. As for the grind more generally, “we will definitely revisit the progression down the line and fill the gaps with new weapons.”
There won’t be Steam Workshop support. “We will allow some degree of modability with the community servers, but a full steam workshop is not possible,” said the dev. “The game was never built for it.” One player asked a technical question about what server optimisation has been like, to which TheLiquidHorse answered simply “hell.”
BattleBit’s enormous success has led to other forms of hell, too, with the first few weeks spent largely fixing exploits, battling against DDOS attacks, and generally dealing with the type of problems that this kind of scale brings. Hence, the biggest learning from creating something like BattleBit: “The more you fuck around,” said TheLiquidHorse, “the more you find out.”
