Amazon’s new shooter Crucible was supposed to be released on May 20, 2020, at 9:00 PM. However, it went horribly wrong. Find out here how the launch went and what players think of Crucible.
What is Crucible? Crucible is a new free-to-play hero shooter from Amazon Game Studios. You play as one of 10 wacky heroes with unique skills against other players, as well as funny creatures on a dangerous jungle world.
What went wrong at the release? Crucible was supposed to be released on May 20, 2020, at 9:00 PM CEST on Steam. But those who were looking forward to the download were sorely disappointed. Even an hour later, no such button was active on the Steam page of Crucible.
Later, at least for some players, the download worked, but they still couldn’t play afterwards. The developers quickly reached out via Twitter and their Discord server and assured that they were working on the problems with the download and the missing start option. They wanted to first supply the USA and then it would be Europe’s turn.
Release is significantly delayed, Steam reviews are mixed
When did Crucible finally launch? I, Jürgen Horn from MeinMMO, actually wanted to try out Crucible after my role-playing session yesterday and was understandably annoyed that it didn’t work. I stayed up until 1:30 AM, playing Apex Legends in the meantime. But eventually, it became frustrating, and my colleague Benedict Grothaus, who also wanted to play, was done by 2:30 AM because nothing was happening.
The developers assured in regular updates that they would soon resolve the issue, but in the end, it was 6:30 AM before a final hotfix brought the Europe servers online and you could play Crucible here at home.
How many players played Crucible: Nevertheless, the player count at launch, according to Steam statistics, was impressive. The peak at launch reached over 21,000 users. At the time of this news on May 21 at 10:00 AM, over 16,000 people are currently online.
These are the players’ reactions to the launch: During the wait, the players’ frustration grew. Therefore, there were already negative reviews on Steam at this time. At launch on May 21, 2020, at 9:45 AM, the overall Steam scores stood at 64% positive reviews, which only corresponds to the rating “mixed.” That is not a good score for a release. Is Crucible therefore a flop?
However, if you filter these reviews by playtime, the situation looks different. The longer someone has played Crucible, the better they seem to find the game. The review scores of the total 1,955 reviews fluctuate depending on playtime as follows:
| Playtime | Number of Reviews | Positive Review Score |
| Under 1 Hour | 491 | 19%, corresponds to “Very Negative” |
| At least 1 Hour | 1,258 | 58%, corresponds to “Mixed” |
| At least 2 Hours | 809 | 73%, corresponds to “Mostly Positive” |
| At least 3 Hours | 309 | 78%, corresponds to “Mostly Positive” |
| At least 4 Hours | 378 | 87%, corresponds to “Very Positive” |
| At least 5 Hours | 22 | 95%, corresponds to “Very Positive” |
What do these numbers mean? As you can see, satisfaction with Crucible rises the longer you play it. Many players probably decided that they didn’t like the game due to the botched launch or after very short playtime. Conversely, those who played longer probably enjoyed it more.
Already after an hour of playtime, reviews were noticeably better, and after 2 hours, most players are generally satisfied. However, it’s worth considering that among the positive reviews, many stem from the closed beta or alpha of Crucible and are from people who were likely already connected to the game.
This is what players say: To give you an idea of the ratings for Crucible, we at MeinMMO collected some prominent opinions from players in each of the above-mentioned playtime categories:
Under 1 Hour:
- MAXus: Incomplete, unpolished, unoptimized. I needed seven attempts to log into this buggy game.
- Justy559: Probably one of the dullest games I have ever sat through… boring characters with boring abilities, confusing mechanics that do nothing to make the game exciting, plenty of bugs, no balance or identifiable roles for the characters; literally just a mess…
At least 1 Hour:
- Oops, an accident: It’s fun if the teammates are smart enough to work together. If not, it’s horrifically one-sided. There’s no text chat in the game, and as far as I know, there’s no voice chat either.
- V3NCH3l2: The game seems fun and almost makes you believe it’s balanced. But it’s not. With some characters, you have to empty multiple magazines into an enemy before they even seem to take damage, and others burn through the enemy in half a magazine. This game is nowhere near balanced.
2 or more Hours:
- Legend of Darko: The main game mode is really fun and has a nice balance of PVE and PVP. There’s a hunter for every playstyle and team fights feel very satisfying. There are performance issues and other things that need to be fixed, but overall I like Crucible.
- Zorfixx: An entertaining shooter. More fun with friends and in voice chat, as the game objectives become much more manageable through communication. There’s no voice or text chat in the game (for better or worse), so keep this in mind if you plan to queue solo.
Do you want to know how the new game Crucible was received here at MeinMMO? Our MeinMMO author Leya Jankowski already had the pleasure of testing Crucible and you can read her assessment of the hero shooter from Amazon here. Have fun!
