Breach

Breach launched into Steam Early Access on January 17, 2018 from QC Games, a studio of ex-BioWare and EA devs promising a 4v1 asymmetrical dungeon crawler with Shadowrun and Devil May Cry vibes. Four players fought through dungeons while a fifth controlled a "Veil Demon" that could possess enemies, traps, and bosses—ambitious co-op with 18 playable classes. Reviews were mixed, the peak player count hit roughly 1,200 on Steam, then cratered. By April 3, 2019—barely 15 months after launch—QC Games CEO Dallas Dickinson announced the studio was shutting down and Breach was dead. StreamerHouse's 293-viewer peak in 2019 came during the game's death throes, when the writing was on the wall. Dickinson's statement was blunt: "The game has not performed as we had hoped, and the changes required to make it successful would require resources we don't have." Servers closed April 30, 2019. In the final days, QC Games turned off the cash shop, reduced all in-game items to 1 Gold, and let players experience everything for free before the lights went out. Breach joined the graveyard of "promising multiplayer games from experienced devs" that launched into an oversaturated market, failed to find an audience, and died with dignity. The industry barely noticed.