FLAGFIGHTS is an abandoned Early Access Digital Homicide style asset flip. The "developer" took a bunch of stock Unreal Engine assets, dumped them all in a blender with the basic FPS engine for Unreal, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers. It's important to also note the "developers" here didn't credit any of the artists and real, actual game developers who created the assets here, so this is plagiarism, as well as shovelware.
The game was abandoned just two weeks after launch and hasn't been updated in almost 3 years. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the game without any notification or admission of failure from the developer. Furthermore, the developer moved on to other projects, so this will never be completed. Unethically, the developers have left this on the Steam store in an unplayable and broken state. This is harmful to Steam and to gamers, because it takes a share of the marketing space and visibility away from other games. It's polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuine games and for genuine indie developers who put months or years into making proper games find an audience.
It failed. SteamDB shows the game hit all-time peak player numbers just after launch, with only a tiny number of concurrent users (just 6 people), and now the game has no players, nobody playing at all, just a one or two people logging on every few weeks then quickly deleting the game when they see how bad it is. As a PvP only game with no players, it's functionally broken and cannot be failed. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
The developers made the fatal, lazy mistake of believing that PvP, other players, would be an acceptable substitute for doing the difficult job of adding single player level design, storytelling, NPCs and other rich aspects of designed game content to the game. As a result of this choice by the developers, the game has little to no actual interactive game content. It's a little considered fact that the vast majority of PvP only, multiplayer only games [b]fail[/b]. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for doing the job of game developers and building a game filled with content. PvP only games must have a [b]huge[/b] player base for them to "go viral" and succeed. But with no single player experience to add lasting value to a game, the developers instead chose to bet against all odds that their game would "go viral" without any actual reason for players to want to play the game. Predictably, they lost this bet.
The developers made the terrible mistake of launching a multiplayer only game in Early Access. This is almost certain to kill the game. Most gamers will evaluate a game only once. If they do so when the game is incomplete, they will check it out, then abandon it (just like the developers did). When (IF) the game eventually does get around to release, there will be no players, because the developers burned the first impressions through their faulty Early Access experience. Players who saw the game and didn't like it because it was incomplete [i]do not come back[/i]. Multiplayer games must have a large population if they are to go "viral" and succeed, especially without single player content to fall back on. Releasing a multiplayer only game into early access kills the game population, and thus the game, before the game even launches.
One final minor point, the controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers.
The game is currently free, but the developer intended to charge money for it. Even as a temporarily free game, it garnered no interest from gamers for obvious reasons. This game was so bad the developer couldn't even give it away.
