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Video games have evolved so much over the past decade, but one of the pillars of the medium that hasn’t changed is the midnight release. A continuation of a time before online downloads were the standard, the midnight release was the standard for retail sales, allowing players to get new games from the store as soon as possible.
Now that retail has fallen by the wayside and downloads are king, is the midnight release necessary anymore?
After watching players’ reactions to the release of Dead Island 2, we believe that the answer is a definitive no. With the fall of retail and the globalization of games, the midnight release no longer offers the same excitement that it once did.
By looking at the release of Dead Island 2, we can see the shortcomings, the workarounds, and the potential replacements for the midnight release.
How Did Dead Island 2 Handle Its Midnight Release?
Dead Island 2 took an interesting approach to its release, opting for a midnight release. However, this was not any midnight release. The game was a rolling midnight release, meaning it was released in each part of the world at midnight for their time zone, not globally at a specific time zone’s midnight.
Players in New Zealand got to play the game before anyone else, as others had to wait for the clock to strike midnight in their time zone. However, smart players found a way around this.
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How Did Players Get Around the Region Locked Midnight Restriction for Dead Island 2?
By changing the time and region of a console to New Zealand in the system settings, the game would unlock for them at New Zealand’s time, rather than midnight in their geographic location. This meant that they could enjoy the game earlier than intended.
Is It Worth It to Release Games at Midnight?
While we appreciate the players’ ingenuity in finding this workaround, it still makes us wonder, why bother with the midnight release? If players can play at anyone’s midnight, why bother doing the rolling release? And if the release time would be better being global, why bother making it midnight?
Back when players needed a physical copy of a game the midnight release made sense. Hardcore fans could grab the game as soon as it came out and play it that night, but anymore?
Anyone can pre-download the game, and retail establishments rely more on preorder bonuses rather than the necessity of a midnight release to generate sales. At this point, the midnight release only generates issues, namely that the game isn’t available to all players concurrently, and that not everyone wants to be up at midnight for a release when the game will be pre-downloaded anyway.
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The are some benefits to the rolling release, such as the company being able to monitor server health as each region goes live, but barring that, we see very little reason to continue this practice.
The games should be released globally at the same time, giving all players an equal chance to start the game. While some parts of the world are going to have worse release times than others, this is unavoidable. Releases should be as accessible as possible, either aiming for the beginning of high-traffic hours for the region of the game’s target audience or at a mostly neutral time for global players.
There is no perfect answer to when a game should be released, but midnight isn’t it. Making people stay up, while still releasing in other regions earlier, makes no sense anymore. Release your game at 5pm. We’ll be much more likely to play it on release then.