Despite its status as a remarkably popular addition to the asymmetrical survival horror genre, Friday the 13th: The Game closed its doors for good last year. That premature end was triggered not by a lack of interest, funds or success, but an ongoing legal battle between series co-creator Victor Miller and Sean Cunningham, director of the original 1980 movie. Besides preventing the creation of any further films starring the slasher icon, the dispute has essentially brought the franchise as a whole to a standstill, much to fans’ disappointment.
Gun Media, which published the interactive spinoff, confirmed several months ago following a content drought caused by Miller vs. Cunningham, that the game’s official servers would cease to operate by November 2020, with peer-to-peer matchmaking now the only means of being able to play.
Naturally, members of the development team have since lamented this unfortunate turn of events, not least due to the untold resources that were ultimately wasted on creating content never to be released. Over on Twitter, co-creator Wes Keltner provides a detailed breakdown of several major DLC drops IllFonic had in the pipeline, including Paranoia, a unique, standalone game mode that Keltner describes as similar in gameplay to Among Us.
In it, players would have all spawned as ordinary Camp Crystal Lake counselors, with no Jason in sight. Instead of being immediately hunted by the machete-wielding killer, survivors would need to search their surroundings for his iconic hockey mask which, when worn, would transform them into the villain. This would only be possible at select locations, however, and counselors were able to kill their colleagues if they were suspected of being the mask’s current carrier.
Sadly, it’s unlikely that any of this will ever come to be in any official capacity, though with Friday the 13th: The Game now essentially being kept alive by its fan base, we wouldn’t be surprised to see modders salvage some of this stuff and reintroduce it in the future.