Pour one out for one of the hottest messes of racing games on PS4.
PlayStation 4 exclusive racing game DriveClub was officially delisted from the PlayStation Store earlier this weekend ahead of a full server shutdown coming in March 2020. The removal comes at the end of a series of missteps, setbacks, and technical failures that plagued the game since its launch alongside the PS4 in 2013.
When DriveClub was initially pitched in the run up to the launch of the PS4 it seemed like a great idea. Sony’s original racing simulator series, Gran Turismo, was suffering from chronic development problems and delays as well as a traditional lack of online features. This left a void in the upcoming console’s lineup that the PS4’s main competitor, the Xbox One, would definitely exploit with the Forza series.
And so DriveClub was expected to be there at the PS4 launch to provide a racing experience centered around groups of players, clubs if you will, racing against each other in a realistic environment. Gran Turismo would still turn up eventually to provide a robust single player game for those who need to own every car in every color with every spoiler, suspension set up, and set of rims, but DriveClub would be there right at launch to ease the wait. It seemed like a good plan in theory.
In practice DriveClub was a mess at launch. The game was plagued with server side technical issues as well as confusion about its business model. A paid version and a free version of DriveClub were announced prior to the PS4 launch. Then the game was released in a nearly unplayable state, due to the requirement for the game to be always online coupled with problems with the Sony server infrastructure. Fixing the problems with the paid launch version led to delays in the smaller free version and the DLC schedule for the game. When the server issues were finally resolved, we were left with a driving game built around racing against other people online. Except that everyone had stopped playing.
As more games get released in digital only format or streaming only format in the case of Google Stadia exclusives, we can probably expect more train wrecks like DriveClub.
