The troubled saga of
Crucible is coming to an end, as a
Final Crucible Developer Update reveals that Amazon Game Studios is pulling
the plug on their free-to-play Windows first-person shooter (thanks JDreyer). As
of now they are disabling credit purchases and
fully refunding any cash anyone spent on the game. Deathmatch will be
disabled soon and a month from now on November 9th they will be taking the last
servers offline for good. The game
launched in
May and trouble surfaced immediately, as they retired two modes just
two weeks later. A
few weeks after that they
reverted the game to closed beta status in an attempt to refine it into a
successful product. But they now explain they are giving up on Crucible
altogether:
In July we moved Crucible into closed beta. We made a list of
features we felt would enhance the player experience, which we shared publicly
on our roadmap, and
with the exception of custom games (which we expect to ship in the coming days),
we completed them all. With those features shipped, our next step was to
evaluate the feedback we’ve heard from you, paired with the data we’ve
collected, to determine our path forward.
That evaluation led us to a difficult decision: we’ll be discontinuing
development on Crucible. We very much appreciate the way that our fans have
rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes
we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy,
sustainable future ahead of Crucible. We’ll be transitioning our team to focus
on New World and other upcoming projects from Amazon Games.
We’re offering a full refund for any purchases made. You can find more
information on our
support page. We will also be disabling credit purchases within Crucible.
In the next few weeks we’ll be hosting a final playtest and community
celebration, both in-game and in our official Discord. After that point we’ll be
disabling matchmaking, although you’ll still be able to play Crucible through
the custom games feature. Stay tuned for more information on that event. Servers
will stay up for custom games until noon PST on Monday, November 9, 2020.
Thank you, as always, for being part of our community. This has been a labor of
love, and we’re grateful for the time we got to spend on planet Crucible with
you.