Firewall Ultra (2023), the tactical team shooter, hasn’t seen an update since developer First Contact Entertainment shut down in late 2023, or just four months after the game’s release on PSVR 2. Now, Sony has dropped a patch out of the blue, tweaking incentives to get new players in… for who knows what reason.
As spotted by Reddit user ‘ROBYER1’, over the weekend Sony tossed out an update that quadruples the amount of XP and in-game ‘Crypto’ currency, making it easier for newcomers to unlock cosmetics and everything else the game hopes you’ll grind for.
But why now? We can’t put it better than ‘Gamertag VR’, who, in a new video (seen below) highlights the history, persistent issues with the game, and adds some speculation as to why Sony would be doing this now, of all times.
“An update like this will surely only benefit new players,” Gamertag maintains. “So, maybe Sony are about to add Firewall Ultra to PlayStation Plus for February, or maybe there’s been a sudden resurgence of interest in the game, or maybe there’s an impending huge sale.”
While any of those scenarios could play out, here’s one that’s slightly more grim. Sony may be giving Firewall Ultra its last hurrah, as ostensibly poor sales and low user engagement over 2024 has put it in danger of delisting. Speculation aside, Firewall Ultra is still selling for $40, which is a pretty steep price for a game that won’t see any meaningful content updates ever again.
Released in August 2023 and hoping to replicate the success of Firewall Zero Hour (2018) on the original PSVR, Firewall Ultra faced a number of stumbling blocks despite being one of the premier shooters on PSVR 2. At its release, many critics cited issues with the game’s control scheme, amount of gameplay variety, and progression system, garnering it a middling Metacritic score of 61/100 straight out of the gate.
Over the next few months, First Contact released a number of patches to smooth some of the issues over, including fixes to aiming mechanics, new maps, balancing adjustments, and the implementation of an Assignments system for leveling and accessing new gear. All of that apparently wasn’t enough to help bring the sort of critical mass of players First Contact hoped for, as the studio announced in December 2023 that the “lack of support for VR within the industry” had forced the studio to close.
