Powered by LootLocker: Taking VR to New Levels by Replacing Proprietary Technology
Who?
Fast Travel Games are an award-winning Stockholm VR developer and publisher founded by ex Rovio, DICE, and Mojang staff.
Features Used
The Story
When Fast Travel Games needed a new backend that matched the quality of one of their most ambitious, popular VR games, they turned to LootLocker.
The team – headed up by veterans of Rovio, EA DICE, and Mojang – has seen its games showered with accolades and glowing reviews, taking prizes at the Meta Quest Awards, the A Maze festival, the Raindance Immersive Film Festival, and the Venice Film Festival. It is fair to say they know a thing or two about making seriously good games.
Based in Stockholm, Fast Travel Games’ has built a reputation for delivering works defined by narrative excellence, fearless innovation, and impressive technical polish, including Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice. And in a testament to the quality constantly achieved at Fast Travel Games, the studio’s debut release Apex Construct remains popular since its launch in 2018.
Back then Apex Construct had been built in tandem with Fast Travel Games’ own proprietary backend. The internally developed technology initially served the game well, but in time the realities of widening platform integration, a changing feature set, and ongoing maintenance meant the backend was no longer sustainable for a tiny team – a common challenge when taking the proprietary route.
Shuttering that backend sadly put an abrupt end to some popular in-game features, such as the online leaderboards. And then the team turned to LootLocker.
“When sunsetting our proprietary backend I wanted to find a solution that would require minimal effort to integrate, be a fully managed and secure solution to minimize our devops effort, and at a low cost. LootLocker ticks all those boxes and more. Not only was it trivial to integrate, one of the most exciting things about LootLocker is getting access to a wide range of features we wouldn’t have built ourselves. Now they are just there waiting to be used!”
Kristoffer Benjaminsson, CTO & Head of Studio, Fast Travel Games
It’s tempting to think that building a proprietary backend delivers something absolutely suited to your needs, and in the early stages, that can be true. But as a game grows its audience, the job of maintenance can become full time, demanding a significant sink of headcount, resource, and budget. LootLocker, meanwhile, provides a complete suite of tools and services that can adapt to your needs.
With that in mind, Fast Travel Games also implemented our Meta Authentication functionality, letting the studio offer and integrate player accounts, while better supporting cross-platform development and features.
“We put a lot of time, work, and passion into Apex Construct, and to see LootLocker help maintain and extend its success has been tremendously rewarding for the team – not least because it helps us continue to serve our player community and add new features. We were ambitious about Apex Contruct’s potential and longevity from day-one; LootLocker helps us meet that ambition.”
Kristoffer Benjaminsson, CTO & Head of Studio, Fast Travel Games