Post-apocalyptic MMOs Fallen Earth And Global Agenda Are Back On Steam

A pair of older MMOs have made their way back to Steam after some time away -- from everyone, as the games in question were totally offline and unavailable until recently.

In October, we learned that Little Orbit was planning to bring back post-apocalyptic MMO Fallen Earth as a totally free-to-play game. It looks like those efforts were successful, as the Fallen Earth Twitter account announced yesterday that it had "re-enabled Fallen Earth on Steam for players to download."

That said, the game has sported a steady audience of double- to low-triple-digit players since that October announcement, so we're not entirely sure just how much has changed over the past 24 hours. Still, if you want to check the game out, it's now officially re-launched on Steam.

More surprising than Fallen Earth's revival is the return of Global Agenda on Steam. It was the first online multiplayer game from Hi-Rez Studios -- which, yes, did make games before Smite. Judging by its player count, it's been on Steam since late January, though Hi-Rez has made no effort to publicize its resurrection; the game is even unlisted, so it won't show up in search results.

Originally launched as a paid game with a subscription in February 2010, Global Agenda went F2P all the way back in April 2011, branding itself as Global Agenda: Free Agent. It struggled to find an audience, with Hi-Rez CEO Erez Goren saying on Reddit that the game "lost a lot of money" and that "no matter how much work we did the user base kept declining." It and Tribes: Ascend cost Hi-Rez $40 million in development costs, while delivering only $10 million in revenue. Servers were shut down in 2018.

A sequel, Global Agenda 2, was announced but faded into nothingness over half a decade ago. It's unlikely to ever be revived, but maybe GA's clandestine return to Steam is a sign that Hi-Rez hasn't totally given up on the franchise. The first game came out at a bad time, when "post-apocalyptic shooter MMO" wasn't anyone's cup of tea and subscription-based games were just starting their decline, but maybe a 2020s version of the game, in some format, could be successful.