Inflexion Games said it’s heard players, and plans to make a playable offline version of Nightingale.
On Steam, the developer said it hadn’t anticipated the demand for offline prior to the game’s recent Early Access launch. It’s now prioritized the mode’s development, though it stressed the effort will take time.
With the state of online games more precarious than ever, players have asked for offline as an insurance policy. Rocksteady similarly said it’d release an offline mode for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League sometime after its initial launch.
Nightingale’s co-op was prioritized over offline because it was always conceived as a multiplayer title. While co-op was more “technically challenging,” the studio admitted it “misjudged” the demand for the latter.
What offline means for Nightingale and Inflexion
Studios used to say their multiplayer games could be played solo and not really speak of an offline mode. With this, Inflexion is quietly admitting how risky live-service games are nowadays.
MultiVersus, for example, was in beta and had in-game purchases for almost a whole year. When it went offline last April, it put those players in a bind until its eventual full release.
Further complicating Nightingale is its publisher, Tencent. The tech giant acquired Inflexion in 2022, and president Pony Ma recently said it’s felt listless with its recent game endeavors.
That kind of mindset, and a reportedly scrapped mobile spinoff for Nier, adds some tension to Inflexion Games and the performance of its debut title.