[digitallis42]

I'm not sure it's a play test failure. If it were, you would think there would have been a burst of users and then nothing. It seems to me more like a market appeal failure. I didn't get the sense that anyone was intrigued by the story or characters, and the hero shooter as a genre has Overwatch, TF2, Deadlock and the bodies of Battleborne and others. They didn't showcase any stunning new mechanics in their intro, nor did they manage to make a funny or compelling story.

The marketing seemed to basically rely on "if they see 30s of gameplay, that will be compelling enough".

If we remember TF2, they launched with a bunch of really well conceptualized "Meet the character" videos which built humor and personality into the characters as well as taught some of the mechanics.

Overwatch launched a whole pile of interesting and very fresh player mechanics, as well as about triple the characters available with TF2.

Again, I can easily imagine they had players testing it. I'm not sure they had many people market testing.