The live service bloodbath continues — this time the casualty is Steel Hunters, the mech shooter game from the people behind World of Tanks.
Steel Hunters launched on April 2 in early access form on Steam. Some had hoped for Titanfall vibes from this free-to-play, PvPvE shooter, but it fell completely flat. And just three months later, developer Wargaming has announced plans to sunset the game.
In a post addressing Steel Hunter’s community, Wargaming said the game’s servers will live on for another three months before the game goes dark permanently from October 8.
“Today we share difficult news: we've made the decision to sunset Steel Hunters,” Wargaming’s statement began. “You've given us so much passion and support but unfortunately we've come to the conclusion that continuing development is not sustainable. We know this isn't the news anyone wanted to hear and we genuinely share in your disappointment.”
So what went wrong? Amid the difficulties so many live service games have endured in recent times, Steel Hunters failed to capture an audience. It launched on Steam with a peak of 4,479 concurrent players and a ‘mixed’ user review rating, and it was downhill from there. At the time of this article’s publication, the 24-hour peak was 97, with just 52 concurrent players — that’s devastating for any free-to-play game.
The top user review on Steam, from a player with over 300 hours on Steel Hunters including its various pre-launch forms, lamented the potential of the game, and praised its mech design and maps. However, they critisized Wargaming's lack of a roadmap, slow pace of updates, and various bugs.
"Early access should have never happened," they said. "We should have never left beta. Time and time again the players have been vocal about changes or fixes that were needed and have come to the table with very helpful solutions only to be met with 'we are moving forward' only to then react with 'why did it go south?'"
Live service video games are enduring a tough time right now, with a number of titles falling by the wayside or finding themselves canceled before launch. Sony’s Concord is perhaps the highest-profile example of that, a PlayStation disaster that cost the gaming business hundreds of millions of dollars. But only last week, Microsoft canceled an unannounced MMORPG from the developer of The Elder Scrolls Online, resulting in hundreds of layoffs.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
