Roller Champions is here, but nobody cares

Roller Champions is here. Did you get it? Source: Ubisoft

On May 25, 2022, on Wednesday of last week, Ubisoft released its new sports game “Roller Champions”. But that didn’t really cause much joy. We’d even go so far as to say that it didn’t even generate much interest at launch. One could even go further and say bluntly, “No one cares.”

But why is that? What is Roller Champions and why is it so uninteresting? Basically, Roller Champions is a new 3v3 sports game that is based on a Free to Play model and can be played on PC via Ubisoft Connect, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. You compete as an athlete with two players against another trio and you have to try to be the first team to get five points.

The playing surface is a round arena, the players are on roller skates, with which you drive in circles again and again at lightning speed. To score points, you must capture the cue ball and throw it through one of the hoops placed above. To prevent this, the opposing team can do almost anything. Risky tackles, blocks and maneuvers must be combined in an action-packed cooperative game. Of course, the focus is on the competitive aspect.

The Story: 2019 to Present

Roller Champions was even first unveiled at E3 2019, during which the game that had just been unveiled there was playable in a free demo for four days. But feedback and technical issues meant that the planned launch in early 2020 had to be postponed by more than two years.

Even the planned release version for 2021, sprinkled with new content and new modes, including ranked mode, custom matches and limited-time game modes such as 2v2 mode, were not enough to keep the new date. Several gameplay optimizations, new solo and team maneuvers, and the “Skatepark” social hub were implemented, but Ubisoft continued to refrain from a release.

Much more than a year later, we are now in May 2022 and, with very little fanfare, Roller Champions has launched and is free to play. One would think that the long additional development time has at least led to the fact that nothing stands in the way of a smooth release. But none.

The Fatal Launch, Now What?

Those interested who really wanted to play Roller Champions and queued for the last week were plagued with various issues, bugs and connection errors. If you look at social media, you will be overwhelmed with threads where players are complaining and exchanging information about crashes, endless queues, failed login attempts, and other difficulties.

Through Twitter, the user ‘Yachaiyo’ writes:

“The game has even more bugs than the version from a year ago… poor performance, keeps crashing, bugs… so sad…”

‘somethingrandom1’ shares his problem via Reddit:

“The game just randomly crashes. Does anyone else have this problem?”

In the official Ubisoft forum ‘JuXxid’ it is asked:

“Why is the match taking so long? And you can’t cancel the game. You can only exit the game and log back in. I’ve been trying to find a ranked game for the last 15 minutes. […]”

This failed release probably gave Roller Champions the last straw. Ubisoft promised to fix the issues immediately, but this really had no effect. While the servers seem to be working properly now, there are still issues in terms of cross-play, game mechanics, and other features that need tweaking.

Even if the game concept of Roller Champions could certainly convince a certain target group, the condition of the game at the time of release was still too bleak to generate euphoria and inspire a large target group. It remains to be seen how intensively Ubisoft will deal with the game in the coming weeks and months.

It’s no surprise that Ubisoft didn’t back the release of Roller Champions with a huge marketing campaign, as has been the case with previous releases of the Studio’s own titles. Additionally, the absence of popular platforms like Steam or Epic Games will ensure that the size of the potential community remains extremely limited.

Initial Season Gameplay Launch Trailer | roller champions

If you haven’t heard of Roller Champions yet, you can watch the game’s launch trailer here and get a first impression of the game:

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