Why Reign of Kings Failed 

I think they laid off the most passionate developers because they wanted to go all out in the game but company owners wanted to save that money for themselves, just a speculation, but sounds like it.

This is what's gonna happen to space engineers, I've got 1100 hours in that game 😭

Valheim could be this games successor once it's released. We just need a forced PVP option, bigger server pop limits (network optimization), and siege engines.

The game was awesome while it lasted the first few months, after the huge hacker problem they had for a long time they probably lost most of their players. The game had huge potential but even in the first 3 months I could tell there wasn't big hope in improving on the aspects that we all thought. I got it as a gift from a 4pack my friend bought and we had an amazing 4 month experience in the game, but that's as far as I leave it. I stayed after everyone left and still found a bit of fun solo, but the times after I came back there was nothing to come back to.

I never even heard of this game but I speculate that it was just burn out 2 major updates a month is an insane load for even the largest dev team let alone a small start up I bet that the devs were being pushed so hard to meet a quota and get the game to a playable point that they either got burnt out or quit because they couldn’t keep up with the load

I remember seeing Starforge as post on Reddit wayyy early in the development. it was a game that looked perfect to me and I had to beg my folks to let me use their card to buy into the Alpha, as time went on I went full crazy fanboy mode, I even made a 1 hour long video on this channel to show all the features of an update and have since deleted it out of embarrassment. I was probably one of the people that held onto hope the longest with Starforge, and it wasn't until it became free and released as 1.0 so they didnt break Steam contract that the penny dropped. I was so disappointed at the announcement of RoK as it was so evident that the Starforge code had just had a makeover. I tried warning users on forums but was downvoted into oblivion and told that this would be different. Even after all this has happened, I don't feel righteous in being right all along, I feel sad that it happened in the first place. This whole debacle really opened my eyes to show that some developers are just scum.

CodeHatch is a company run by grimy scammers. I bought Starforge way back when it came out, felt the betrayal of the 1.0 update, and essentially watched CodeHatch run off with my money. I'm extremely glad to see they've been publicly dragged through the dirt after Reign of Kings' failure, especially because they won't get a third chance to make half a game and betray yet another loyal community.

sometimes it's times like these that make me think on something. why did minecraft ever become popular? let's look at the facts of what minecraft was in 2010-2012 when it really started to take off and sell like crazy: -solo indie developer known for lazy, half-finished work -paid early pre-alpha, alpha and beta access -extremely buggy and poorly optimized -open world sandbox survival zombie pvp mmo -unparalleled grindfest of high risk low reward gameplay -large servers dominated by hackers and abusive players -cringiest fanbase of all time packed with shrieking nine-year-olds -rushed "release" with incomplete features and bugs unfixed all of these things together are today regarded universally as huge red flags signalling "do not buy this game it is trash". however it is now on every single platform, polished to an almost perfectly streamlined bug-free experience, maintained by a large team of experienced developers funded by _Microsoft_ of all things, and is literally the highest selling video game of all time ever, with tens of millions of unique monthly players even well into 2018. I have well over 10 thousand hours played on minecraft covering its earliest releases to the latest beta-channel development patches, and I am literally still playing right now I just can't stop. So what is the difference, why is it just like every other game and yet unlike any other game, is it just luck?

Just when you thought ruin could re-birth it, Ruin Gets CANCELLED

Starforge failed and then they just re skinned it to make RoK... I don't get why it would suddenly work when they're using the same base as Starforge...

Reign of Kings didn't just die, it was murdered.

RoboKast: "None got closer than codehatch" 0:15 Rust: "huh?"

I remember when every RU-vidr played this but it was a whole week then over lol.

I enjoyed it how you could "catch" someone and drag him all around the place with a rope.

Out of every game I have played this one always sticks in the back of my mind. Everyone who played on this REALLY DID talk to each other and role play. We didn't make enemy's simply because we lost stuff to other people and were toxic. We all secretly wanted to have huge castle sieges and large group medieval warfare, and in a game where you had to find and craft everything it made it so captivating. My greatest memory was having 2 surrounding friendly neighbor clans, each had around 3 - 4 members in the clan including mine. Our one neighbors base kept being camped and robbed by the king and his clansmen. During this time my friends had worked vigorously to create a surplus of weapons, armor, and eventuality made a trebuchet(catapult). after our neighbors had been suffering we invited all close allied clans for a fest where we told them our plans to attack the kings castle. In one night cycle we joined together under one banner(literally) to attack the castle at dawn. With all 12 of us we held flags, torches, and beated drums throughout the journey all while laughing and saying "holy shit this why I bought this game". Standing before the cruel king we blew war horns and set up our siege equipment to attack. After an hour of fighting we got through and I was crowned king of the land. The very people we had fought against congratulated us and mentioned how they had goosebumps, being able to see the things that made them buy the game in the first place. To really feel like your are going to war in this game with a decently large amount of allies and enemies is truly epic. And I will never forget just how fun it is to play a game the way is was meant to be. NO stupid tricks, NO hacking, No duplicating, and you will have a smile on your face the whole way through even when you die.

They made the money when 14k people bought their game then just trickled some updates to make it look like it failed

Ruin was canceled!

"But catapults are so much better" My trebuchet would like a word with you

The syndiacte project died with it basically

I remember this game. When we played this game we didn't survive, we LIVED. Most people's bases are four thick walls with bed-rolls and steel chests inside. We planned the whole thing out with drawings and stuff. We instead built a full-on citadel. There was an outer wall with towers, battlements, and traps as a defense and the only way in was a drawbridge over a spike pit. Within the walls were a garden, training grounds (which included an archery range) plus some chicken spawns so we could harvest their feathers and meat, and we even had a swimming pool that we built into the ocean. We had a dungeon, which had all the standard torture tools plus a customized jail cell that we created because we thought the normal cage cell that you can craft wasn't cool enough. (This jail cell had level one furniture in it, including a bed, shelves, a table and a rocking chair. The jail cell was probably more nicely furnished than most bases XD.) As for the main castle, it had a fully laid out floor plan with hallways and a grand entranceway that took up all three floors. We had an armory in which we drew a massive tactical map using the in-game paintings system, where we marked the positions of enemy bases. Every player had their own room, which was furnished with the nicest possible beds, desks, chairs, and chests, plus guest rooms. Workshops, kitchens, smelteries, storage rooms, and armories were everywhere, and we had signs in the hallways to prevent people from getting lost. We even had fireplaces. The thing took up four of our five crests (crests are used to claim land). We had people attacking pretty much every day. We would always find evidence of missing and damaged blocks, and we could tell that the enemy gave up after finding there was a second layer of super-bricks behind that first layer. We would demand enormous ransoms of stone in exchange for not attacking other bases, which is how we funded the whole thing. I don't think most of us even ever used a pickaxe. We would just terrorize the server into grinding the materials we needed. Even the king himself would sometimes come to pay tribute. Our base was only raided successfully once, after pushing us back through the inner walls they raided the archery towers and the catapult tower (where we had a bunch of catapult ammo.) They cleaned out the training armory which someone left unlocked, and vandalized a bunch of our banners before we managed to drive them out. Thankfully they never breached the inner castle where almost all our loot was. We managed to capture a prisoner who we jammed into the jail cell before dragging him outside to be executed. God, nobody wishes this game was still alive more than me.

Starforge killed my interest in early access games. I still buy them once in a grey while but it's usually only when they're nearly content complete and I'm too impatient to wait the final few months. Code Hatch is an awful company.

I remember when RoK came out. I had so much fun! Last November the game was on sale for $2 my friends got it and we had a good time. But the game is dead now and I can only hope for Facepunch to do magic on their new game.

My best multiplayer moment happened in this game, me and a friend were playing on the server but kept getting raided with no sign of breaking our walls. After a few nights of this we stayed up and found out hackers would just enter our fort and take what they wanted. We got feed up with it and so did everyone on the server. They entire server came on when the Chinese hackers were and and THE WHOLESERVER fought against them. People we had never met joined together and were screaming fuck the Chinese it was a losing cause going up against hacker but will always be an experience I would never forget

I remember wanting this game so much lol, also been following the development of ruin from shadowfrax and I can't wait for it to come out. Seeing how rust is an amazing game I couldn't see how they could mess up a midevil type game. Although shadow does say it's only being worked on by mainly 1 dude. I still have hope.

"Starforge." Ah, yes, this explains everything.

I bought Starforge back in 2013 on steam hoping it would have grown by the time I got a good PC, when i did get a PC it was the exact same and it was free, so I basically spent like £17 on a game that went free. When are you gonna do your next Unturned podcast anyway? really enjoyed the previous one :)

The way the camera is locked into the character's head while the rest of his body moves makes me extremely uneasy.

if this channel goes down im going down with it

I remember playing this with my friends. I logged in hopped into a server and went to meet them. I was instantly roped by them and put into a cage.

Man RoK was so fun. Such good memories with it. A shame how hackers ruined it. Thats all the game is now, memories.... I hope I and others can get such moments again in ruin, along with the tales of new folk who will join us in ruin.

>game by codehatch that's literally all you had to say

This game didnt just die it never got a chance to live !

And then they decided to make a western, since they did so well with their sci-fi and medieval ripoffs.

RoK failed cause the dev team fell apart and the community became toxic The End

Ruin got ruined

Fortnite is over rated

GAMERS ARE NOT BUSINESSMEN. Game devs often do not think of themselves as business men, but they are. There is so much that can go wrong with any small company that it can literally die in the blink of an eye. I do not know why ROK failed, but saying constantly that it was a lack of passion, is gamer talk. There are so many issues with little companies like this, its hard to pin down what happened and why. It could be anything from tax issues, property problems, to legal problems, cash flow shortages, personnel departures, key people being pulled away by other facets of life. Maybe it was just a scam, i dunno, but don't just pin this stuff on "The devs lost passion for the game", cause that just makes you sound like another gamer that has no idea how the business world works.

Almost bought the game, how could they sell a dead online game on steam for $10 bucks? This world's full of greed.

What if another company took over his game do you think it could have come back?

When I plained Reign Of Kings, I absolutely loved it. Nearly 5 hours on the first day playing it lol, back when it was peeking around 3k players. I was sort of a "slave" for this guy lol, and I got many resources starting it. I quit playing for a bit when I got bored and occasionally came on. Eventually, the game died out, and I'm stuck here with 10 hours for it. 3.74 pounds for 10 hours was alright for me, and I enjoyed myself as it was a very fun game. Also, please make a video covering StarForge :)

there has to be a way... someone has to try to buy the rights

That moment when you realize that FacePunch has stop production on RUIN

Do starforge!

My favorite game of all time. And the game Ive had the most fun on in my gaming life. Could never ask for a better, more captivating and immersive game than this. I remember I used to play on a Game of thrones roleplay server, where the map was divided into 7 parts, with 7 houses that controlled each part. I was Tywin Lannister, the leader of house Lannister and warden of the west. We held the throne and diminished anyone who had the will to try and dispute our claim as the greatest house of Westeros. The amount of roleplaying moments, awesome roleplay sieges and siege defences, the beheading of our enemies, and rescue missions and dimplomacy to free our own kin. And the battle to stay the strongest house.. Those are memories that will never, ever, fade away.

it failed because of hackers

Could you do a video on jagex's Ace of Spades?

I dunno if you know this or not, but I looked up Ruin after seeing this video, and unfortunately, man... It seems to be dead. Either the website was hacked and there's some joke shit going down, or the devs literally gave up because they don't think they can compete with Rust. That's kind of shitty, a version of RoK that's actually good would have been amazing. Edit: Never mind, they definitely were not hacked, they just took down most of the site. I managed to circumvent their removed links/forum access/ect and find the official goodbye posts, here: ruin.facepunch.com/f/ruin/bsqxj/The-End-of-Ruin/1/ Edit2: lolwait, they stopped developing a game their fans want because they think they can't compete with their own game? I just realized they are \ the developers of Rust. xD

This game was amazing, it was popular, and I am stil hoping for it to re-rise... #RIPRoK you will always be remembered by your whole fanbase, we loved it..

Its sad to see this game in the state that it is. I've played it since its release and the playerbase is stagnated. Rip.

The one concept I liked about Reign of Kings actually wasn't the medieval theme. It was the concept of the 'central government' in a game. While I don't like that in real life (since it really has caused most of the world's problems), in a video game environment, it gives all players a central goal to work towards. People who would normally grief other players in other games might instead focus on seizing the throne, because there is no bigger grief than a high tax on everyone. But instead of being frustrating, it would often drive emergent gameplay. Bitter rivals might quickly become allies to deal with the common threat of the new oppressive king, only then to again stab each other in the back to get the crown for themselves. Players, even the most selfish, might realize that in order to seize the crown, they have to appease others and get their support, which without would result in a very short reign, if they even touch the crown at all. That's probably why the community became so friendly, for the most part. I say this concept can not only be applied to a medieval theme, but many different themes. For example, a space mining Eldritch horror theme, where a centralized space station is the only place in the asteroid belt in constant connection to civilization, meaning whoever controls it effectively controls the region. Since Earth and Mars are desperate for resources, they turn a blind eye to the constant changing of leadership, so long as they get the resources. Players get merit points for depositing resources at the station, but whoever controls the station gets a cut. Why are players getting merit points? The story is, because of the tendril monsters taking over the asteroid belt, and because humanity has out populated the resources available on Earth and Mars, only so many people are allowed to return to those planets. Specifically, the ones who bring back the most resources. So the game would start, and this is how a round would go: At the beginning of the round, players may decide to go into merit point debt to start with more equipment and resources, or team up. This counts negatively towards the score in the end, so it's very much a risk/reward thing; teams divide merit points evenly among the surviving members at the end of the match, minus the times they've been killed. Then somebody would either become elected, or seize control of the space station, and players would go out to mine, build ships, and set up outposts. Whenever a human player dies by another human player, that player has the option to respawn as a human with a penalty to their merit points, or become a tendril monster and keep the merit points they've earned, but must kill two other players before they can respawn as human. Those killed by a tendril monster lose twice as much merit as killed by another human, and also must kill two human players before being able to respawn as human. Players can decide to 'cash out' at any time, becoming a tendril without penalty, but are also unable to respawn as human. This locks their merit points from further penalties, but enables them to kill other human players to lower their merit points. Merit points are earned exclusively through the deposit of resources into the space station, which can have a transfer fee percentage taken by the space station CEO. Players do not have to deposit all their resources, and in fact can use them to build more ships or equipment for themselves; they can even stockpile it until a change in transfer fees. But resources must be deposited at the station to count toward score. The round continues until either all players have 'cashed out', are dead, or are playing as tendrils. Resources such as equipment, ships, and outposts that are still left on the map are carried over into the next round, though their ownership is reset. Ships and the resource aboard them that are driven out of of the map to 'cash out' count toward the merit score. Players 'cash out' by reaching the limits of the map, and accepting the prompt. Anyway, thanks for reading. It's too bad the 'central power' concept hasn't caught fire. It might have taken center stage instead of 'battle royal' games.

16/07/2019 i go back from the future to tell you there is an update !

Hey RoboKast! I have almost 3,700 hours on REIGN OF KINGS!!!! Please tell the developers to finish the game! Thanks!

It was a good game while it lasted and i got hundreds of hours of fun out of it, RIP Reign Of Kings! Can't wait until Heat!

Hey I am still playing this game and there's a server without hackers! BGSGames. It's a really good RoK server and it isn't dead! During peak hours, there are 20 or so people playing.

Here is a true story about my experience: me and my friends started playing this game when it first came out and joined the public server we where treated with hackers spawning catapults everywhere and insta killing us so we went to a private server with admins we were so happy the game was so fun that we spent 24 hours straight building a castle then the next day a flying admin flew into my guarded base so I killed him cause I thought he was hacking he banned me then removed my base I was sad. The next day me and my friends moved to a new server that said we could raid at night but when we did we were banned by the admin after this they added a update where you had to put wood in your family Crest to keep your property yours.... at that point I was so upset I had a hard life in real life and the game was my escape from life that night I was drunk and so upset I downed a bottle of pills and was put in a mental hospital.

If you have Reign of Kings come join the Fruitbowl Gaming RP server, its one of the last good servers on the game.

400 hours on this game and I don't regret it. I had good and bad times, and no game could get my adrenaline pumping like reign of kings. However, the sword play was trash. If this game had chivalry PvP I would've had hope it could've become a legendary game. Role playing and even being sneaky and defying admin rules were all that made this game unique and exciting. I knew where every node was on both maps and witnessed colossal bases you could only dream of. 😩❤️ I'll miss you Rok

Rust and Ark were the most successful and really good games now

When you said Code}{atch I realized I didn't even need to finish the video.

"What Ark was a year ago" lol rip :(

This game sucked first day of playing it. I had to rent a server just to enjoy the game

I bought star forge when I was 15, they stole my money. I'm still hunting these frauds.

You would think devs would figure out that 99% of early access games DO NOT WORK

I find it so sad when a game developer loses interest in their own game. It's like a parent losing interest in their child☹️

Reign of Kings had potential and it was squandered.

The hackers always have to ruin everything

Look at HEAT on steam, it’s RoK2

Remember I won a copy of this game from a streamer named Timmac

Well,it's clearly that ROK was abandoned.But mostly because of bad coding write not dealing with the hackers and major game needs such as optimization,server sided player movement and much much more.Although they failed badly with the first games,SF and ROK,Code}{Hatch is releasing tomorrow a new made by them Early Access game called Heat. It look fucking great,but its not medieval.But kept major things from ROK.You can have babies,be a president,governor,sheriff,ride horses,BEARS AND BULLS,you can build a hobo,a mansion and even a fort.You can play as american or native american,craft fire weapons and lots and lots of stuff.Search Heat Codehatch on YT.You will find a reveal game trailer and tomorrow will be available on steam for 20 bucks.Maybe this time they wont disappoint. P.S:They actually abandoned ROK for this game in which the inventory is server sided along with player movement and they have anti chest system and a company dealing with future cheaters and hackers.All good to y'all!

i like these types of videos by you

i freaking bought this game after watching Mr Moon play it, I played for a few hours and got bored because of the lack of players, it's too bad because it had SO much potential.

RoK, starforge, rust, dayz standalone, h1z1, ark, miscreated, conan exiles. Basically nudie-man pvp survival trollbox games have become scrub-tier cash grabs and only Ark wound up being good because it involved something that didn't exclusively revolve around exclusively murdering other players, exclusively. The jury is still out on Conan Exiles, but that 67% rating right now is pretty damning. Survival games just ended up being the neanderthal genetic throwbacks that evolved into what is now the "Battlegrounds" fad, where any pretense of doing anything other than running around, looting, and killing everything that moves in nothing but your underwear (or less if they could) is unimpeded by any other aspect of the game, and the facade and pretense of 'permanency' is abandoned entirely in favor of 15 or 30 minute speed-dating matches.

Im sure know this. But Ruin was abandoned by Facepunch. Seeing Frankie footage made me sad. Hope he comes back. But least I can get occasional fix when he plays with Sada

Hackers. end.

What did you expect? Same people who made StarForge. I loved that game. I hate that game. I still wish it would have fulfilled its promise, but it didn't. Its unrealistic to take a handful of tech demos and design ideas and develop them independently and expect it to make a good game when thrown together in a jumble.

Sadly, "RUIN" was canned....

After watching this painfully boring 10 minute video that easily could have been three minutes long, I ultimately disagree with the conclusion. The game died because hackers ruined it, point blank. The video doesn't even start talking about the role hackers played until almost 9 minutes in.

i refunded becuz i joined 2 diffrent servers and admins raided me when i just started building

some of the game mechanics made the game bad to lets say you have a server with 20 players in the beginning and a tax of 2 % now someone naked takes the throne becouse its not difficould to do that and changes tax how many players will be online after 15 min when that naked dude changes tax to max 20 % and manages to stay king for at least that duration exactly either its a clan server with 15 out of 20 people storming the castle or 1 admin bans the naked dude who claims to believe he took the throne fair and square everyone random will probably leave and join a server with less tax alot of the end game materials where in 1 spot and only 1 spot to find and its a small map... doomed to be walled in of a clan balance map design where complete failures too

This is still my favorite game of all time to date, i always want to return to it time to time but the intense lag and hackers have ruined the experience to the point its forced me to avoid playing. Me and my friends always talk about one day seeing a remastered Reign of kings or a game similar. But no one has stepped up to the plate, The idea of a New perfected version of this game has a lot of potential for money behind it. i was surprised to see a video about this game rise up, SOMEONE MAKE IT AGAIN BUT THIS TIME BETTER!

I never got to try or even play a milliseconds of reign of kings. It is completely like my style. Politics and war. I just hope it returns back alive due to someone reviving it. I just wish I could play this. I have hope and they say hope is key to success.

Roborants (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Reign of kings had the most intresting gameplay with the roleplay aspect baked in and the natural push to over throw the king and building and army and confronting other groups. nothing has filled that role.

Can anyone tell me if there is a medieval survival based game as good as prime RoK out now? Ive always wanted to play this game and its been in the back of my mind for years and i just now decided to check up and the game and it breaks my heart to see it. I really hope theres another game like this out there and if there isnt i really want someone to make something like it.

"The devs abandoned the game and the community died" The community survived although small and sparse, we enjoy this game we make plugins to help improve the game.I fell in love with this game since i was 13 years old in 2016 and now i host a server on the game one of the last good ones based on how it used to be back in 2015. Were looking for good roleplayers and people who want to help improve the games community. As i really deeply hope the devs see how much potential this game has and either sell it on or work on it again. Hop onto this server or at least support it by voting: reign-of-kings.net/server/15537/

being said all the games they've made has been in early access and never finished. Do not buy any other of their games like ''Heat'' is basically a copy paste of this game with some new stuff with atlas like bugs and really mediocre lol

Somebody should buy this game from the developers and finish what they started. I'd play the fuck out of it. If I had the money I'd do it.

I play ROK, I love this game!!! I would still recomend the game!!! I wish someone would take over the game and make it reach it's huge potentials !!!

I actually own Star Forge on Steam. Game was cool. Unfortunately, the devs suck :(

Such shame, they could've made it bigger.. But they choose to settle on broken reputations

I'm still a little sad about the whole subject. I mean there is no other game like reign of kings. RIP

I remember starforge, I got my dad to buy it me after begging him for awhile and it turned out to be poop

Trebuchet is the superior siege weapon. It can launch a 90kg object over 300m

What do you think of their new release "Heat"?

Hey I remember this game, when I was like 6 years old squid plays did a video on this.

yeah they finally succeded.... The forest is the best survival game there you have it :D

This game was fun as fuck, should've had better devs/support

We really need someone to buy this game. Then start developing it further.

I remember watching videos about this game a few years back. It looked amazing to me, but eventually the game died out, and reviews went down the toilet, so I didn't pick it up. Hopefully, we get another medieval survival like this, but with a dedicated developer team, and HOPEFULLY a well-known company. We'll totally get a medieval survival game, where you can make your own castles and kingdoms. I'll live another seventy or so years, so I think it will happen in my time, lmao (Edit): Okay yeah, I found a game. It's called "Renown". It looks good, and the developers have had past successful games. It looks promising, so let's just hope it won't suffer the fate like "Reign Of Kings".

I really miss this game :( I was sad when they changed the map. Someone needs to remake this game