Social Media Accounts For Defiance Now Exist Solely To Shill For gamigo's Other Titles

Post-apocalyptic RPG/shooters Defiance and Defiance 2050 will soon be experiencing an apocalypse of their own. gamigo announced earlier this month that the linked games will be heading to the scrap heap on April 29.

It wasn't a terribly surprising move, given the games' relative lack of popularity and promotion – though they did at least outlast the TV show they were based on by over five years. Even so, when most games are sunsetted, it happens with a measure of dignity and respect for the players who enjoyed and followed the title for years.

With Defiance, however, gamigo is going a different route. Not content to simply ask players to “try our other games” in a simple manner, it's wholesale sold out the Defiance Twitter account to shill for its other titles. The fourth-to-last tweet it sent out was the notice of the impending shutdown; here are the three it's sent out since:

#Trove is celebrating #InternationalWomensDay! Head into Trove today and take part in their fun forum event! ?￢ﾀﾍ♀️

? Use this code now to kick off your journey with an additional pack: THXANDSEEYOUINTROVE ! #StaySafe #PS4 #XB1 pic.twitter.com/sTacz5xUUo

— DEFIANCE (@DefianceGame) March 8, 2021

Looking for a new venture? ?￯ﾸﾏ Start playing with the new Akasch Invasion in @ArcheAge and ArcheAge: Unchained! A whole new world to explore and new secrets to uncover!

?Redeem your welcome gift code now and dash into battle on March 25!#StaySafe #AAUnchained #MMORPG pic.twitter.com/0HYJr7OPzT

— DEFIANCE (@DefianceGame) March 12, 2021

The weather department has sent an alert. Conditions on the front are becoming unstable!

We need you to SET THE WAR MACHINE now!

?Grab your survival gift pack and join the new event starting now in Desert Operations: https://t.co/HnjyAznOOR!#staysafe #military #strategy pic.twitter.com/l9B8E5W5jH

— DEFIANCE (@DefianceGame) March 17, 2021

The exact same posts can be found on the Defiance Facebook page. We get it, gamigo. You want to transfer players of one of your titles to another. It's the right, corporate, thing to do.

A single post, or article on your website, offering bonuses to ex-Defiance players in your other games, would be a better, more respectful, way to go. It would stop reminding Defiance players on a regular basis that their game is going away and making it seem like you're only interested in their dollars. At the very least, try to do something with your social media accounts rather than farm them out for your other games.

Am I just being irrationally angry? I haven't played Defiance in years, so I'm not personally affected by the shutdown, but something about it just doesn't feel right to me. Regardless of what you think of the quality of Defiance, or the other games gamigo is trying to substitute for it, it seems discourteous and cold. Maybe this person has the right of it:

Kills off the good game and advertised the shit game in its place

— Aaron (@Deathclawcito) March 15, 2021

The whole approach just feels like a poor move on gamigo's part. I can't think of any game that was shut down – not even gamigo's Atlas Reactor – that was so relentlessly mined for whatever scraps of players it could provide in its death throes. (Here's the last tweet from the AR account before it was rebranded into Atlas Rogues.)

This week or the next, I'm sure we'll get a tweet from the Defiance account asking players to switch to Rift and offering a few goodies as compensation. I'd be wary of taking advantage of that package, however; given how Rift seems to be doing as of late, it might not be too long before it's also simply used as a recruitment tool for other games.