Fans of PlanetSide Arena will want to get their last fun in with the title over the next month, as Daybreak Executive Producer Andy Sites released a letter last night with the sad announcement that the title will shut down completely on January 10th, 2020. The reason is likely unsurprising to anyone who has watched the game struggle with its small playerbase during the early access period this fall; a sizable chunk of players simply never coalesced for the game, and that made the original vision of the battle royale title unworkable on its own, though we hope that whole “stepping stone” to PlanetSide 3 idea isn’t over.
Everyone who pre-purchased items inside the free-to-play game will be eligible for a refund, and the game’s DLC and in-game purchases are already disabled. The game never actually made it out of testing and into a full launch, which likely influences the decision to offer refunds across the board.
Our condolences go out to the fans who were hoping for a better future for the title despite its population woes, as well as the developers who did their best to right the ship.
How much money have the wasted on all this? A couple years in development, plus the delay in release.
What a waste.
At least they are doing refunds. EQ:Next also never made it to release, and they kept that money. I guess the next thing is DCUO remastered for current consoles and hardware? Daybreak broke my heart with EQ:N, I’m done with them. :(
This was such an obvious failure to anyone from the very start. I can’t even think of an analogy for it to explain it to someone who don’t know what Planetside is. Maybe “imagine Meryl Streep deciding to release a porn video”? This idea was actually that idiotic.
Planetside and Planetside 2 combined is in my top 3 of hours spent playing of any game series. I never even considered installing a 3rd person battleground shooter just because it had the name of a thing I like. I’m not going to watch Meryl Streeps porn video!
I still just don’t know what they were thinking.
Is there thinking at all?
Shutting it down as early as possible in January. The game is relegated to a tax write-off and nothing more, less than 30 days from now.
It made so little money that Daybreak is even refunding everything. That’s how bad it was. They didn’t even do that with Landmark.
That was quick.
Uhoh.
Hard for anyone to be surprised since no one wanted this in the first place.
Also shows that Daybreak’s pretty much stuck being a reitrement home for SOE’s games. They don’t seem to have the resources to commit to a new big thing, and thus are stuck playing it safe and basically maintaining/updating what they can.
Kind of like Broadsword, Standing Stones, and Gamigotrion.
Sucks that the state of MMOs has been reduced to this where most of the big name MMO companies have basically been reduced to lesser shells that maintain/update existing stuff but haven’t the stones/funds to be ambitious again. Funcom/CCP/Jagex are like the only ones left I think? The latter two being mostly one-hit wonders that tried to expand in other areas and then Funcom kind of just doing whatever it can in the gaming industry.
Well at least they are giving refunds.
I never understood how it could be different enough from normal Planetside. I would imagine Arena was just PS without the teams.