To be fair, Square Enix absolutely set Foamstars up to die regardless of platforms.
First they had the brilliant idea to release Final Fantasy Rebirth’s demo on the same day as Foamstars. This essentially took all of the attention off of it in a way that is entirely avoidable.
From there it was a rather lacking experience. I don’t just mean in terms of modes/maps, though it was there as well, I distinctly remember there being nothing to really chase besides season pass levels. Everything else was just time served by playing as X character, or Y number of matches. Some of the choices were also so unfathomably bad I legitimately don’t understand the logic.
This was something I initially mentioned in my review. The main free reward players could chase after was a solid silver skin for playing 333 matches, and a gold version for 777 matches. I followed up when another update hit with a separate article because they added a pink metallic skin for 1,500 matches. I don’t think I did it for the last one, but they also added a black metallic skin for 3,000 matches. Mind you, each are per character, so you’d need 33,000 Foamstars matches to have every skill. You’d also have to play another 3,000 matches each time a new character releases, and a match only counts if it’s as a player you don’t have the skin for in question.
Even the paid side was set up to fail. They did FOMO costumes, which can be a motivator for some, but then they made later costumes palette swaps. I could get the trench coat, and top hat skin for one of the characters anytime in red/black, white was only offered for the first season, purple is “limited,” black with gold flourishes was also in season one, with black/silver being a standard product. I also remember from my follow up post some of the details were deceptive. Seasons would add “over 20 skins,” but things like the aforementioned Pink Metallic skin was among them. This meant every season after the first would have 8/2X of the skins simply be those versions.
Finally, the seasonal set up is designed to churn players. Players were given I want to say five weeks to finish a season, and I think the highest I ever made it was 30 out of 40 ranks, and even that took something crazy like 20 hours. I remember calling it a subscription, because it essentially was. And given the high expectations, and extreme FOMO, it makes sense most players walked away.