It’s a sad day for some in the gaming community. Only six months after launching Rumbleverse, the company has made the decision to shut down the free-to-play battle royale game. As of 10 a.m. Feb. 28, the vibrant brawler will be shut down. The game placed 40 fighters in an arena together, and using various powerups and special skills, players duked their way to victory, slowly winnowing the playing field until only one victor remained. The premise follows a long slew of massive online brawlers, all trying to mimic the success of Fortnight.
While the game has been well received by its fan base, it was unable to capture the attention of gamers as a whole and the company made the difficult call to shut the game down in late Jan. 2023. In an open letter to its fans, developer Iron Galaxy thanked the player that did show up saying, “We loved watching you play. We have learned from your stories and your insights.”
The company’s letter was surprisingly upbeat. While it did touch on the sad news of the shutdown, it embraced the lessons from the failure and spoke passionately about the process of creating worlds and spaces for players. The company shared its love for the community that had developed around the game, and said, “if we can welcome people back onto the deck of the battle barge again, we hope you’ll be there, laced up and ready to take your rightful place in the canon.”
With a long list of games they have helped port to other systems and several titles they have fully developed themselves, there is no doubt that Iron Galaxy can live through the blow. In the dev team’s own words, “this is not the last time you’ll hear from us. This is not the last time we will invite you to play.”
