Godfall

A next-generation showcase that wasn't

Godfall had one of gaming's more prominent launch slots in living memory: alongside the PlayStation 5 console itself on 12 November 2020, and as a PC exclusive to the Epic Games Store. Counterplay Games built it as a looter-slasher around Valorplates — ornate, transforming suits of armor that turn a Valorian knight into a melee powerhouse — chasing the loot-driven structure of Diablo or Destiny with a distinctly next-gen visual pitch: particle effects, elaborate armor geometry, and combat framed to show off what new hardware could render.

Critics weren't convinced the substance matched the spectacle. OpenCritic's aggregate landed at 60, its "Weak" tier, from 92 critics — with only 10% actually recommending the game. Metacritic's PS5 score sat at 61. The specific complaints were consistent across outlets: mission structure that repeats the same handful of objective types across every level, a story critics called forgettable, and combat that looked more impressive than it played, with real depth concentrated almost entirely in one-on-one boss fights rather than the more common trash-mob encounters. "Obnoxiously stylish next-gen spectacle, but its appeal only runs skin deep," reads one representative critic summary.

The first $70 backlash

Godfall's reception wasn't just about the game's quality in isolation — it landed at the exact moment the console industry was testing a newly raised price ceiling. At US$69.99, it was among the very first titles to launch at what became the PS5 generation's standard "$70" price point, with an even pricier Deluxe Edition on top. For a game critics were already calling repetitive and light on content, that pricing became a story of its own: reviewers explicitly weighed the asking price against the amount of genuinely distinct content on offer and found it wanting, in a way that shaped a lot of the game's early reputation independent of the moment-to-moment combat quality.

That pattern repeated just over a year later. In December 2021, Godfall arrived on PlayStation Plus not as a complete game but as a "Challenger Edition" — a stripped-down version limited to three endgame activities, with the actual campaign and most content locked behind a further paid upgrade. PS Plus subscribers, used to receiving full games through the service, reacted with real frustration at what several outlets described as an unprecedented move for the program: a limited-feature version dressed up as the free monthly game, with the real game sold separately on top. It's a second, distinct monetisation misstep on top of the original launch-pricing backlash, about a year apart.

What's actually good, in fairness

It would be unfair to Godfall to leave it at that. A real, if minority, contingent of players genuinely enjoy the combat on its own terms — straightforward, readable, satisfying against single strong enemies even if critics are right that it repeats itself against groups. The Valorplate armor designs are consistently praised even in negative reviews, and the game is unusually generous about letting you experiment: respeccing your build costs nothing outside combat, and death penalties are forgiving by genre standards, restoring boss health only partially rather than resetting an entire encounter. The Ultimate Edition sold on Steam today — the only version available there — folds in the Fire & Darkness expansion and everything else released since 2020, which is a meaningfully better value proposition than the fragmented original launch structure, even if it doesn't fix what critics found thin about the core game underneath.

The part that makes this worth revisiting in 2026

Here's the detail that turns Godfall from "a mediocre 2020 launch title" into something worth a 2026-specific warning: it has never had an offline mode. From day one, even solo, single-player play required a live connection to Counterplay's servers — a design choice multiple launch-week reviews flagged as baffling for a game with no meaningful shared-world or live-service component, and one Steam reviewers are still bringing up years later: "requires online to play single-player campaign and boots you if your internet disconnects," reads one representative complaint from the 2022 Steam launch window, echoed by others describing being kicked mid-session by connectivity blips that had nothing to do with actually wanting to play with anyone else.

That design choice has now collided with reality. Counterplay Games quietly shut down in January 2025 — reported first by industry press rather than any official studio statement — after a partnership on an unannounced project fell through at the end of 2024. By June 2025, players were reporting that Godfall's co-op matchmaking had stopped working correctly, unable to launch into matches, in what community discussion links directly to the studio's closure. Solo mode reportedly still functions as of this writing, with all purchased content accessible — but there is no announced offline mode, no end-of-life plan, and no one left at the original studio to build either if the servers required for even single-player mode are ever switched off entirely. One Steam review from November 2025 sums up the risk plainly: the game is "still sold as a Coop and Online-Game" by its publisher, six months after the servers it depends on visibly began to fail, with no acknowledgement from either Gearbox or 2K.

Verdict

Godfall was a Weak-rated, overpriced launch title in 2020, and the years since haven't changed that critical verdict — they've added a new, more serious problem on top of it. The combat has real, if limited, appeal, the armor designs are genuinely striking, and the Ultimate Edition is a fairer deal than the original launch structure ever was. But this is a single-player-capable game that has never once worked without a permanent server connection, made by a studio that no longer exists, already showing the exact symptom — broken online functionality with no fix — that precedes a full shutdown. Buying it today isn't just buying a mediocre 2020 game at a discount; it's buying a countdown with no announced number on the clock.