Every Game to Shut Down Quickly After Launch

Highguard is being shut down on March 12, roughly a month and a half after its surprise launch in January. Revealed as the “one last thing” at the end of the most recent Game Awards, Highguard is often considered a victim of its own unexpected hype, especially since a prominent theory ahead of TGA was that the show would end with the reveal of Half-Life 3.

Gamers can debate about whether Highguard deserved to be shuttered so soon after its reveal and subsequent launch, but one thing’s for sure: it’s not alone in its brief lifespan. Over the past decade or so, the games industry has touted a number of other live-service endeavors that were swiftly, and almost always unceremoniously, snuffed out before they had a real chance at life. While such cancelations are a symptom of the problematic games-as-a-service model in general, it can also be quite sad, sometimes, to learn that a promising-looking game was taken offline just a few years, or even a few months, after its initial release. So, in honor of Highguard, here are some other notable live-service projects that suffered a similar fate.

Concord

• Concord launch date: August 23, 2024
• Concord shutdown date: September 6, 2024

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. For many gamers, Concord represents everything wrong with contemporary live-service games: it’s been called generic, derivative, and needless, drawing unfavorable comparisons to the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy and Overwatch, its characters, setting, and writing regularly scrutinized by an audience that was turned off by the project practically as soon as it was revealed. Its $40 price tag was also a major knock against it, as there are countless other, better-established competitive shooters available for free. With a reported budget of over $400 million and an estimated 25,000 units sold, Concord was deemed an immediate failure by Sony, who sunset it alongside its developer Firewalk Studios after just two weeks.

Systems

Released

August 23, 2024

ESRB

t

Developer(s)

Firewalk Studios

Publisher(s)

Sony Interactive Entertainment

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The Day Before

• The Day Before launch date: December 7, 2023
• The Day Before shutdown date: January 22, 2024

Before Concord, the most infamous live-service launch in modern history was The Day Before, a game whose development story is too bizarre to dive into here. Ahead of release, the game secured the most-wishlisted spot on Steam several times courtesy of its tantalizing sales pitch: it was marketed as a gritty, immersive, and almost unbelievably feature-rich open-world MMO, which struck a chord with millions. These expectant players were surprised when The Day Before turned out to be more of a traditional extraction shooter, and not a particularly effective one at that. Bizarrely, the game’s developer, Fntastic, announced that it would be dissolving less than a week after the game’s launch, saying that it “[lacked] the funds to continue.” Naturally, The Day Before was shut down shortly thereafter.

Systems

Released

December 7, 2023

Developer(s)

Fntastic

Publisher(s)

MYTONA

• 
  

Radical Heights

• Radical Heights launch date: April 10, 2018
• Radical Heights shutdown date: July 8, 2018

After Lawbreakers, a surprisingly well-crafted arena shooter that was put down just a year post-launch, developer Boss Key Productions sought to reposition with another multiplayer shooter, this time in the vein of the then-cutting-edge PUBG and Fortnite. Enter Radical Heights, a colorful and flamboyant battle royale that, for all its lack of polish, was broadly considered a great deal of fun by those who played it. Sadly, it would follow in Lawbreaker‘s footsteps, never gaining enough traction to stay afloat, and was shut down alongside Boss Key Productions in Summer 2018.

Systems

Released

April 10, 2018

Developer(s)

Boss Key Productions

Publisher(s)

Boss Key Productions

Crucible

• Crucible launch date: May 20, 2020
• Crucible shutdown date: October 9, 2020

Amazon Game Studios’ Crucible had been in development for about six years before its initial launch in 2020. Upon release, it received a lukewarm reception, prompting the Amazon-owned Relentless Studios to put it back into closed beta in June 2020. It remained in this state until October of that year, when Relentless shut the game down for good, claiming that it “didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead.”

Systems

Released

May 21, 2020

ESRB

t

Publisher(s)

Amazon Games

• 
  

Babylon’s Fall

• Babylon’s Fall launch date: March 3, 2022
• Babylon’s Fall shutdown date: February 27, 2023

This is an especially painful live-service blunder, in my opinion. Babylon’s Fall came from the legendary PlatinumGames, the studio behind some of the most important action games of all time, including Bayonetta and Nier: Automata. Despite being best known for these single-player experiences, Platinum took a crack at the live-service multiplayer scene in 2022, and it turned out about how you would expect: Platinum fans had little to no interest in Babylon’s Fall, and other demographics didn’t seem to find it appealing either. Thus, the project was disintegrated less than a year post-launch.

Systems

Released

March 3, 2022

ESRB

T For Teen due to Blood and Gore, Language, Partial Nudity, Violence

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Apex Legends Mobile

• Apex Legends Mobile launch date: May 17, 2022
• Apex Legends Mobile shutdown date: May 1, 2023

Although the main Apex Legends experience was going strong in 2023, EA opted to nix its mobile port just before its first anniversary. Apex Legends Mobile had reportedly gotten off to a strong start, being one of EA’s best-performing mobile titles at the time, though the company claimed it had not met the “bar for quality, quantity, and cadence.” It’s hard to know exactly what this means, though it’s been speculated that EA’s expectations were not met, even by the game’s strong performance. Apex Legends Mobile was produced in conjunction with Tencent’s Lightspeed & Quantum, so it’s also been theorized that there were some collaborative issues, but we don’t know for certain.

Released

February 4, 2019

ESRB

T for Teen: Blood, Violence

Publisher(s)

Electronic Arts

Rumbleverse

• Rumbleverse launch date: August 11, 2022
• Rumbleverse shutdown date: February 28, 2023

A wholly unique battle royale centered around cartoon-style wrestling rather than firearms, Rumbleverse met a tragic end roughly six months after it released. It generated a good deal of buzz upon launch, with battle royale and fighting game fans alike fervently praising its novel mechanics and over-the-top energy, but this didn’t seem to be enough. Rumbleverse developer Iron Galaxy Studios didn’t exactly specify why the game was being killed, though the developer implied a lack of players in a blog post, which lamented, “When you work on a video game, you imagine the community that will show up to play it someday.”

Released

August 11, 2022

ESRB

T For Teen due to Crude Humor, Violence

The Culling 2

• The Culling 2 launch date: July 10, 2018
• The Culling 2 shutdown date: July 18, 2018

There might be some obscure games out there with shorter lifespans, but I certainly haven’t heard of them: The Culling 2, sequel to the promising but deeply flawed The Culling, was taken offline after just eight days. The first game (which, oddly enough, was shut down just a month before The Culling 2 launched) is a battle royale that actually predates both Fortnite and PUBG, though the release of each of these games did considerable damage to The Culling‘s player count. The Culling 2 was meant to give the IP a new start, but a lack of originality and polish, not to mention a release date shared with a new Fortnite season, meant that it would leave a very different mark on the IP’s legacy.