Xaviant’s free-to-play battle royale effort The Culling: Origins is shutting down on May 15, 2019.
The game initially launched through Steam Early Access back in March 2016, before eventually making its way to Xbox One and Linux for its official launch in October 2017.
It’s been a rocky couple of years since then, with Xaviant actually suspending production in December 2017 to focus on a sequel (appropriately) called The Culling 2. That follow-up, however, was quickly shelved following a poor launch, and the studio chose to revive and rebrand the original as The Culling: Origins.
Xaviant turned the resuscitated re-release into a free-to-play affair, and hoped that revenue generated from in-app purchases would be enough to sustain its team and ongoing development. Unfortunately, that hasn’t proved to be the case, and the developer has now been forced to shut down the game for good.
“Even with thousands of active daily users, the revenue was only a fraction of what our dev team required to continue daily operations. As a result, we’ve been forced to reduce our team size, which renders us unable to provide ongoing support and updates that would allow the game to grow and thrive,” reads a blog post from the developer.
“If there is a team out there who is interested in taking the reins from us and exploring the game’s potential, please contact us. We think that with the proper resources and know-how in the free to play world, the right group could make great things happen.”
With servers going offline on May 15, the game’s store pages and in-app purchases will also be disabled “as soon as possible.” Although it’s sad news for fans of The Culling, they’ll still be able to enjoy the title’s offline modes after the shut down.
“We want to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has enjoyed the game, contributed feedback, and spent their hard-earned money to support our efforts over the years,” continued Xaviant. “The Culling has always been a labor of love, a learning experience, and an opportunity to pursue our passion for making games.”