Four years after being delisted from Steam, the massively multiplayer side-scrolling action game The Showdown Effect (opens in new tab) It’s back with a fully fan-made revival, officially endorsed by Paradox Interactive.
Paradox released The Showdown Effect in 2013 to decent reviews. With a rating of 70%, it called it “a cheap and hilarious action game that won’t win any awards, but offers solid laughs.” (opens in new tab)— but it really went nowhere. Player numbers dropped quickly after launch, and in 2018 Paradox pulled the plug and he removed it from Steam.
It was over until a few years later, when Giuseppe III (who asked not to use his real name) got involved. He was an early player, but ironically, he got into this game almost entirely by accident. He ended up getting a copy of The Showdown Effect via the Humble Bundle released months after the game.
GiuseppeIII said in a recent chat, “While scrolling through my Steam library looking for something to play, I noticed the game, remembered the trailer from when I got the Humble Bundle, and decided to check it out.” At , the game was already in decline from a user perspective, and most of the prominence it gained from the Humble Bundle was gone.
“Usually low player count marks the end of multiplayer games, but in fact it’s one of the things that drew me to the game and kept me playing. , Seeing the same name week after week is something that keeps me playing.”
One of our community members going by the name Deathaxe reached out to GiuseppeIII in 2020 with the idea of putting the old gang back together.They are discord (opens in new tab) However, since the game was no longer available for purchase, nothing could be done about growing the community, making it virtually impossible to bring in new players.
Interestingly, The Showdown Effect’s removal from Steam appears to be the result of a mistake. Based on discussions with Paradox and its original developer, Arrowhead Game Studios, Giuseppe III said Paradox removed the game from Steam after shutting down its microtransaction store his servers as part of a cleanup effort. I was. Someone at Paradox apparently assumed that the shutdown would bring down his entire network infrastructure, making the game unplayable. Therefore Steam has been removed. All right. The problem is, while old-timers can continue to pointlessly beat each other up in violent cartoon action, newbies find old keys lying around (in Humble Bundle, for example) or I was told that I could only enter if I purchased from a party reseller.
The welcoming close-knit community and seeing the same name week after week kept me playing. “
TESR by GuiseppeIII
To bolster his player base, GiuseppeIII first acquired about 100 old keys from Arrowhead and gave them away. He then contacted Paradox. Paradox was sympathetic, but he wasn’t inclined to prioritize The Showdown Effect once it failed. So he took a more proactive approach to the problem by removing Steam from the equation.
“Since late December 2021, we have been able to unzip and decompile the game’s source files,” explained GiuseppeIII. “After that, I consulted with the team Magicka Wizard Wars Reborn I was doing a similar project with another Paradox title that uses the same game engine (shout out to Alias, Rat, and Neon) and I was able to create a lua DLL injector. game code. “
After getting there, he contacted Paradox again, and after some discussion, they granted him a non-commercial license to develop and release the game for free. With that secured, he continued working on the project as time allowed, until releasing his The Showdown Effect: Reloaded on August 20th.
The updated game includes a new launcher, bug fixes and balance improvements, new features (including new levels, ranked modes, new gameplay settings), and access to older real money characters and skins via the standard experience system. includes the ability to It still uses Steam as the “networking stuff” backend and automatically installs a Steam-based wrapper to make it work, but all the actual game files are only available from GiuseppeIII’s site.
The Showdown Effect: Reloaded has nearly 150 players signed up since it went live in August, and GiuseppeIII hopes that number will grow as rumors of the revived game spread. . We want to host tournaments with in-game rewards, with new leaderboards and Elo rankings, and we also plan to incorporate a new “Weekly Challenges” feature.
“Looking into the future, anything is possible,” he said. “I know the planned feature that many people are looking forward to is bots. TSER is semi-open source (access granted after review). You can contribute!”
Confrontation Effect: I tried reloading myself last night and it worked great. The installation process is quick and smooth (the installer automatically sets up what you need from Steam), and the game itself works flawlessly. The basics of gameplay are simple, but there are complexities in movement and combat that obviously take time and practice to understand: Giuseppe III has dominated me many times in one-on-one duels. But finally I came across a strategy that allowed me to get the kill: I asked: Asked him a question, then pasted him in while he typed out his response.
Whatever happens from here on out, The Showdown Effect: Reloaded is entirely GiuseppeIII’s project. “Paradox doesn’t have a big ongoing role in terms of development, but making the project possible (through licensing) in the first place is a big part of what makes it a fan of their property (niche fans like TSE). (also) shows an amazing commitment and relationship,” he said. “It was so easy for me to ignore my request, but it’s great that Paradox helped me with everything!”
Links to The Showdown Effect: Reloaded and our community Discord (useful for setting up matches) can be found here: theshowdowneffectreloaded.com (opens in new tab).
