This past June saw Evercore Heroes, a self-described competitive PvE fusion of MMO and MOBA, enter into closed beta, and though it made an extremely strong argument in favor of its brand of gameplay, the player numbers were just not there, likely thanks to it being a paid-for beta.
As it turns out, the numbers were even lower than anyone suspected – low enough that Vela Games has just announced that it will stop updating ECH starting on August 24th, making the game and its battle pass freely available to all and pulling founder’s packs off of digital shelves but still selling game store items at 50% off.
In addition, the studio will be “reducing the team headcount significantly across all departments” over the coming months.
Despite what Vela considers an awesome community that tried to get the word out about ECH and claims of how many players liked competitive PvE, the title “didn’t meet [its] financial expectations.” The studio also posits that getting a new kind of game with a new IP from a new studio is challenging in today’s games industry, writing, “[I]t’s brutal out there as many studios are harshly realising, and we didn’t do a good enough job telling our story to a wider audience.”
As for the future of the title, Vela vows to push on with a renewed focus on its competitive PvE features as it codenames the game Project R. This shift in development is still noted as being in early days but promises to bring more roster-based co-op team play, a sterner PvE challenge, an improved format to make strategic decisions much clearer, and more impactful rewards; presumably the updateless “maintenance mode” will come to an end when this new version comes online.
“This has been the hardest period of Vela’s history so far, and ultimately I know it’s even harder for the people on our team impacted by these changes,” the studio admits. “None of us wanted to be in this position, but the best of this team’s incredible work will live on as Evercore Heroes evolves into its new form.”
