A month ago, we checked in on Population Zero, a survival MMORPG that hit early access back in May. It was a rocky launch, and I think it’s fair to say that literally everyone made the obvious jokes as the game’s population did indeed eventually drop down to zero. In August, we noted that the team behind the game, Enplex, had fallen almost completely silent on Steam, social media, and the game’s own website; the only commentary from staff came from early August quotes from a developer, who said Enplex “hope[d] to add an alternate mode with more days between wipes” but that a “non-wipe version [would] take more time” and that they had “no information on the future patch at this time.”
“August will be a very light month for the game,” the dev told players on Discord. “In terms of content I mean.”
That was true for August, but it’s also turned out to be true for September as well. The team hasn’t tweeted or facebooked in two months. Ditto for Steam updates. Five people are playing the game as I type this, and as MMO Fallout’s Connor noticed, the Enplex website has been down for quite a while (though the game’s site is still up, it also hasn’t seen as much as a hiya since mid-July). The subreddit is a wasteland, and the Discord… well, the Discord is actually where concerned players continue to congregate and share theories about what’s going on with the company and the game they purchased. The current rumor (thanks Rogerio for the link!) is that the team has been moved off the project and is still hunting for a new patron or publisher, but again, since nobody from Enplex has piped up since the beginning of August, that’s not confirmed.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that reviews are only “mixed” on Steam, though that seems to have a lot more to do with apathy and poor sales in the last couple of months than with anything else. We’re still crossing fingers that something comes of the game in the end, but… if you can still get a refund and haven’t yet, now’s probably the time. See you back here in another month?
