DECEIVE INC. is a unique online multiplayer game where you use subterfuge to come out on top. It's a unique blend of stealth and battle royale with a touch of prop hunt—a quirky spy vs. spy tone and a unique gameplay loop. Developed by Sweet Bandits Studios and published by Tripwire Presents, it’s launched to overwhelmingly positive responses and reviews.
A small indie studio based out of Quebec City, Sweet Bandits Studios was founded by AAA studio veterans in 2016. Tripwire discovered them in 2020 at PAX East and the rest is history.
Challenges
Sweet Bandits Studios ran into an issue many indie developers face, stretched too thin to meet timelines. From his years of experience working on AAA titles, co-founder Charles Dufour knew that dedicating resources to getting live service components working would remove resources from executing the game’s unique vision.
The team had the experience in-house to execute this, but likely at the cost of delaying the launch significantly to do it properly. Their extensive experience in the industry and working in AAA studios gave them a deep understanding of the costs of solving these problems internally. It was likely that in pursuing a vision as large as DECEIVE INC., they would need to go down the rabbit hole of dedicating some of their staff to specialization on the game’s backend.
Publisher Tripwire Presents has ample experience developing and publishing live service games with games like Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, Chivalry II, and the Killing Floor franchise under their belts.
Sweet Bandits understood that if they wanted to launch their game on time, they would have to look into a backend solution for inventory, matchmaking, and server orchestration.
Solution Overview
Just over halfway through 2022, they were introduced to AccelByte through their publisher Tripwire Presents. We worked collaboratively on a plan to get DECEIVE INC. on four different platforms and using our account system and executed this plan in just under six months. We provided the team with solutions for multiplayer matchmaking, e-commerce, access, and analytics.
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Results Overview
With a final sign-off from the QA team on March 21, 2023, DECEIVE INC. launched to an overwhelmingly positive response, with 87% positive reviews on Steam and reviews of 9/10s and 4/5s from critics.
After launch DECEIVE INC. saw steady and consistent growth leading them into a very successful first update called Misery Empire. It can move towards optimizing costs and recruiting bare-metal solutions to save on the steady and predictable population of returning players.
Even with Sweet Bandits co-founder Charles Dufour having over a decade of experience building these solutions from scratch, doing so would have caused the game to be delayed significantly. They would also need to invest time and resources into maintaining the live service solutions. Using AccelByte allowed the entire Sweet Bandit team to focus on the game and its mechanics rather than the backend. Being able to dedicate more effort to the game and mechanics played a big role in the game's phenomenally unique mechanics and polished release.
Interested in learning all the technical details? In our full story discover how we help developers send latency data, pass certifications, get day-one DLC across all platforms, sync entitlements, track legal agreements, make data-driven decisions, and more.
