Online Servers in Gravity Rush 2 Shutting Down in 2018

"My thoughts exactly."

After only a year?! It shouldn't have been in the game in the first place, then.


What better way to start off my day by knowing that the online servers in Gravity Rush 2 will be shutting down on January 19, 2018. An article by Gematsu not only confirms this, but the actual in-game servers as well. I knew this day would come, just not this soon. I'm going to be missing the community aspect of sharing photos and rating others' because the photography was one of my favorite aspects of the game.

Now, I wouldn't be making this post if it wasn't for the fact that the Dusty Tokens will be disabled as well. Why is that, you ask? Dusty Tokens are earned in several ways, mostly with people rating your photos or completing treasure hunts. Earning a certain amount will unlock in-game rewards like photo items, gestures, talismans, and even costumes. I wasn't a fan of the Dusty Tokens because of the constant grinding required to unlock these rewards. But, hey, I unlocked them anyways because I'm a dedicated Gravity Rush completionist.

I'm more worried about future players, though. Since the servers are shutting down soon, that means that newer players getting into this game afterwards will have some content locked out. You want to unlock Kat's outfit from the first game, which requires 5,000 Dusty Tokens?

This is why using the online aspect to lock content in a single-player game is a bad idea. Granted, the rewards are just cosmetic, but future players shouldn't have to be left out. It's about as bad as games having Trophies/Achievements that require you to play online. Once the servers are down, you're out of luck.

There could be a way, however, and this is what I said when I reviewed Gravity Rush 2:

"What if years from now, someone buys this game and fails to unlock everything because the servers are either shut down or not as active? They're pretty much out of luck, I'll tell you that. To think that I'll be able to unlock all the content in the first game years from now, but not in the sequel. I just hope that if the servers are shut down in the future, maybe there will be a patch that lets players automatically unlock these rewards from the start. Online servers do not last forever, so I say that this is the way to go."

If the developers manage to make that content accessible afterwards, then all my worries will be lost.