"Live service" games will not live forever, and in the euphemism of the game business, they will all eventually "sunset." In a speech at GDC this week, Josh Harrison, director of marketing at Velan Studios, urged other developers to prepare for that inevitability.

Harrison was in charge of marketing for the competitive dodgeball game Knockout City. We loved the game and gave it 90% in reviews, but had trouble keeping players after it went free-to-play; Velan Studios shut down Knockout City's servers two years after its launch.

To boost the development team's morale and avoid being disrespected by fans, Harrison recommends celebrating the sunset with a bang rather than trying to minimize the news; the end of Knockout City was announced in a video message, and Velan leaked the news early He recorded multiple versions of the game in case it was ever released, and included a $25,000 tournament (which, in hindsight, could have been scaled back), two weeks of in-game events, a limited edition art book and vinyl soundtrack, and more.

However, Harrison has one recommendation for studios when closing a live service game: before closing Knockout City, Velan released the game as a standalone Windows executable with private server support. It is still available for download.

"A small but strong community exists that continues around this private server months after the shutdown by playing games daily and hosting their own tournaments with prize pools. One community member even created a launcher to facilitate entry to the private server, as well as a private server list of active player counts."

Harrison acknowledged that the feasibility of a standalone client release depended on the game and the studio's situation; Velan Studios itself was not in danger of shutting down, despite Knockout City's struggles, and had the funds to devote a team of developers to the issue for a short time. The development build of Knockout City was "very similar to the private server build," Harrison said, and the project was "relatively light lift."

Developers needed to "sanitize" the private server build of Knockout City, removing licensed software and crossover cosmetics and scrapping the free-to-play progression and monetization system. They also needed to get it right: ending the game meant moving the development team to another project entirely, and after that point, no one would support the stand-alone version. It was worth the effort, Harrison says.

"If there's any one thing to take away from this story, it's this: make a private hosted version of the game. 'This is the single biggest thing we've done to influence the favorable reception of Sunset. It gets great press, great response from players, and in the end, the game that everyone in the studio worked so hard on will live on forever, even if the live servers are offline.

"In our case, we were only able to do it for PC players for a few different reasons, but we still got the job we wanted done, and we had a very light analytical hook, so nine months later we still see people playing it every day.

That the best way to soften the blow of the game closure is for people to keep playing the game is not the most surprising observation ever, but in what could have been a story about the best way to save face without actually saving the game, that was Harrison's best recommendation I found it reassuring that it was. Usually, when a live service game ends, it becomes impossible to play.