If it’s baffling to you that an MMORPG as tiny and mild as Ship of Heroes is causing such a stir among gamers who until last week didn’t even know it existed, well, welcome to the genre’s weird side because that is exactly what is happening.

As we noted last week, Ship of Heroes, which has been in development since 2016, is finally set to launch today, which is fine (and a long time coming), but what has so many people agitated is the fact that studio Heroic Games is asking 60 bucks for the box and first month, with a $15 monthly sub after that.

That ask has prompted a genre-wide discussion about the value of MMORPGs, indies, business models in 2025, and even public relations. For example, in our comments, many readers expressed concern that the game was too unfinished or indie to command a premium MMO price, that too few people will pay a sub for even AAA MMOs never mind indies, or that even players who like the box-and-sub model were unlikely to go for this one. Still others echoed something we’ve voiced dozens of times now: Ship of Heroes is in direct competition with the legally licensed and completely free-to-play City of Heroes Homecoming, the MMO for which it is a spiritual successor.

Also worth noting is that while the game has been crowdfunding for years in the form of its early buyer packages, it did not actually complete its Kickstarter and clearly never made enough to even pay the devs consistently, so this is not one of those games that took millions and skated off into the sunset and needs to be dragged through the Accountability Gauntlet of Shame. Surely those people who did buy in early knew they were jumping into a very early indie game, as development was fairly transparent and Heroic Games held multiple open test events. In fact, we covered some of them ourselves in steams and articles dating back to 2018, so nothing about the game’s design or state is a surprise to anyone looped into the indie MMO scene.

• The Stream Team: Diving into the latest Ship of Heroes demo build • The Stream Team: Taking another look at the Ship of Heroes housing beta • The Stream Team: Checking out the Ship of Heroes housing beta • Into the Super-verse: First impressions of Ship of Heroes’ mission beta • The Stream Team: It’s raining invasions in Ship of Heroes • The Stream Team: Sheltering in space in Ship of Heroes • Into the Super-verse: Ship of Heroes’ character creator is bare-bones yet still engaging • The Stream Team: Testing Ship of Heroes’ character creation closed beta with Heroic Games • The Stream Team: Dog pile on Ship of Heroes! • The Stream Team: An exclusive exploration of Ship of Heroes • The Stream Team: A dev tour of Ship of Heroes

However, this has not stopped people from really going to town heckling the devs, who for their part have been responding in ways that have only seemed to enrage gamers more, creating the weirdest gaming spat since internet spat since Krafton accused Subnautica leads of mischief and absenteeism.

Over the weekend, MOP’s Chris chronicled some of the drama in Discord and on Steam; gamers alleged that the Heroic devs are “out of touch,” censorious, and fiscally irresponsible. Still others have conjured up the conspiracy that the devs are intentionally tanking their own game and/or that the launch is a cash grab (honestly, some of these people are crashing out over trying to expose and ridicule Heroic, and the fact that all those posts still exist for me to link to them makes me wonder how awful the deleted posts must have been, except that people have posted some of their banned posts on Reddit and some of them seemed pretty mild, so eh).

This would all be mostly ignorable as typical trash talk from gamers who were never going to play regardless of the price but for the fact that the devs have floated the idea that the spike in wishlists means “most people are extremely pleased with the price.” In fact, they’ve said it on Discord and Steam alike.

Yeah, we suspect most people are just baffled now at how it’s all being handled. If this really is just a big trick to get a whole lot of MMO players to pay attention, it’s working. In any case, the Steam launch is expected this morning around 10 a.m. EDT according to Steam and 2:30 p.m. EDT according to the devs. See you all then.

Source: Discord, Steam. Cheers to Pepperzine, GD, and everyone who’s been tipping us comments!