A battle in this WW2 MMO went on for over 2 months and killed 9 million players, so devs stepped in to end it early, only for "one last hurrah" to win it anyway
War, war never changes
Foxhole is an MMO about wars that go on and on and on, but one continued for so long the developers had to step in to give new players a chance to experience the game properly.
Foxhole is a brutal and tedious simulacrum of World War Two. Frontline soldiers fight over territory while logistics troops manufacture weapons and build up the tech tree from the safety of the rear. Every bullet has to be delivered down the lines, every tank has to be made, it's as complete a war as you'll find in a video game. Players even go on strike.
PCGamesN spotted one war that had gone on for an unusually long time; over 70 days. The war on the Charlie server resulted in a stalemate where neither side was getting closer to winning, both had maxed out their technology, and all players were stuck in an end-game loop of manufacturing, delivering, and fighting with little to show for it. Honestly, it sounds like the perfect metaphor for war.
To win, one of the sides needs to earn enough victory points, which they get by taking control of parts of the battlefield. To speed up the war, developer Siege Camp announced it would be reducing the number of victory points needed to win. "The main reason is to ensure that new players that have joined Charlie in the last month get the chance to experience a war as it's meant to be played, progressing through early, mid, and late phases of the tech tree," a statement by the developers reads.
After more than 70 days and over 9 million player deaths, the war ended before the developer measure even came into effect. The winning Colonial side managed to succeed in an offensive push of the Warden's areas before the victory point threshold was lowered.
The decision to intervene seems to have gone down well over on the Foxhole subreddit, too. The dev's choice to end the war pushed players to act fast, "When everyone came back for one last hurrah, the war ended [...] People dumped their stockpiles and made a massive push that they should have made before, but they lacked the confidence/manpower," notes one player.
"It was mostly a ship suicide run because the war was going to end. It's not something we could have organized without that info imo," comments another player.
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If Foxhole isn't your thing, check out some of the other best war games you can play right now.
I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.
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