Pour one out for one o🌳f the hottest messes of racing games on .
PlayStation 4 exclusive racing game DriveClub was officially from the PlayStation Store earlier this weekend ahead of a full 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 alonℱgside the PS4 in 2013.
When DriveClub was initially pitched in the run up to the launch of the PS4 it seemed like a great i📖dea. Sony’s original racing simulator series, Gran Turismo, was suffering from ch𝐆ronic 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, wouldꦦ 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 env⛎ironment. 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, bཧut DriveClub would be there right at launcꦿh to ease the wait. It seemed like a good plan in theory.
In practice DriveClub wa⛄s a mess at launch. The game was plagued with server side technical issues as well as confu⭕sion 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 to𝕴 be always online coupled with problems with the Sony server infrastructure. Fixing the p🥀roblems 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.