For the very few of you who still pay attention to this game, you may have noticed Counterpact has become painfully inactive as of this year. As the developer, I did all I could, well beyond just wasting two years developing a game that I got next to nothing out of. I had tried to give people what they want, I tried to hold people's hands to an unreasonable degree, I tried to remain active and welcoming in the community, I tried to reach out to people to help the game get some sort of actual exposure, and more. The vast majority of people who played were only looking for the next new (and likely free) thing, and had no intention of actually learning anything or sticking around. The game will not appeal to everyone, but it did seem to have a generally positive response when it was active, which makes its inactivity even more disappointing. Nothing worked, and despite having what I thought was a low bar for "success", the game ended up being a failure.
The breaking point was the Lunar New Year 2024 event. Despite considerable work being put into this event, including brand new gameplay content that was unlike anything that had been added prior, the event saw very little activity. In fact, the turnout for the Lunar New Year 2024 event was lower than any other event in Counterpact's history, even during Counterpact's "closed" alpha testing. It appears as though no amount of work, no amount of content, and no amount of catering is going to improve the activity of the game. As such, and partially in direct response to the pitiful lack of activity during the Lunar New Year 2024 event, it is clear that content updates are not worth the time and effort, nor is work on the game in general.
With all that said, you may have noticed the official servers went down some time ago. More recently, the lobby server has been shut down as well. These cost money to run; while the donations are much appreciated, they do not come near close enough to cover server costs. Furthermore, it just seems like a waste to spend so much money on a game nobody cares about. Given that Steam servers were implemented a while ago, these will become the only way to play Counterpact (aside from direct IP connections). Just to be clear: Despite everything, the game is not being shut down, and the account server will remain accessible. However, matchmaking and the IP-based lobby server have been shut down, and content updates are indefinitely put on hold. This also means that the Spring's Celebration and Autumn's Welcoming events will not be hosted for the foreseeable future, due to their current lack of content. In the unlikely scenario this actually improves in the future, these features may be reinstated.
Nonetheless, the actual patch notes can be found below...
Summer Vacation 2024:
The Summer Vacation 2024 event is now live, decorating maps with summer ornaments and enabling the Summer Sportsball metagame. Due to crippling inactivity and lack of interest from the community, few items have been added this year. The event will run until August 1.
- New Summer Sportsball Memento:
- Neon Participation Medal
- This Memento will be reused in the future if the game remains in its current state.
- New Summer Vacation Gashapon Items:
- Personal Shade (Common Outfit)
- Squiblie (Common Pet)
- Hearty Snack (Common Heartbeats Weapon Skin)
- Burger Keychain (Uncommon Donator Item)
Miscellaneous:
- The lobby server has been shut down; the server browser will now only display Steam lobbies.
- Matchmaking has been disabled.
- This is partially due to the inactivity resulting in it not serving its intended purpose to begin with, but is also due to the fact that matchmaking was handled by the lobby server. As the lobby server has been shut down, matchmaking can no longer be performed.