Improbable, the publisher of the PvEvPsurvivalbattleground game Scavengers, announced via areporton its official website that the servers of the early access game will shut down completely on December 16.
RELATED:Scavengers Gets an Official Gameplay Trailer, Developed by Former Halo Creators
The impending news of Scavengers' closure does not necessarily come as a surprise, considering the development studio Midwinter Entertainment was sold by Improbable to Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive, asEurogamerreported, last May. As a result of this deal, Scavengers’consoleversions — which were in alpha testing — were canceled, and thePCversions were kept operational by a small internal team with no plans for a full launch or a development roadmap to gather more interested players.
Eurogamer has been privy to the statistics of the player base of Scavengers since its launch in May 2021, and it never really saw much success. Even though it was originally developed byHalo 5veterans who worked on the Warzone multiplayer mode, concurrent player numbers never rose above three digits. It was also supposed to make use of Improbable’s immersiveSpatialOSto be able to accommodate thousands of players with no latency or networking issues and conduct a mix betweenPVEandPVPplay styles on a much grander scale than anything currently on the market.
The original idea of Scavengers was actually centered around this hybrid gameplay. Players could fight each other solo or in teams in aBattle Royale-esquemap, but this map is inhabited by mini-bosses and optional activities similar toDestinyraids, with other multiple zones, sub-zones, and individual activities in each. Sadly, the goals of the Midwinter team didn’t align with Improbable’s newfound ambitions in theMetaverse, and that’s why this marks the third time a SpatialOS game has bitten the dust.
Back in 2019, two games that had been promoted as the future of multiplayer gaming, Mavericks: Proving Grounds and Worlds Adrift, were both supposed to utilize Improbable’s SpatialOS, and both got shut down for reasons related toinsufficient fundingandcommercial viability. Currently, Improbable has had not a single success with its gaming endeavors, asPC Gamerwords it, but a report by theFinancial Timessays that the company is close to getting new funding despite its loses and is expected to reach operating profitability in 2023.
