The battle royale market is saturated, it’s undeniable. Yet when Ubisoft launched its futuristic free-to-play battle royaleHyper Scapein 2020 it seemed like a likely success. With Ubisoft’s backing,Hyper Scapehad an opportunity to thrive by consistently releasing updates and new content. YetHyper Scape immediately struggled and was broadly criticized. Since then, the battle royale hasn’t recovered. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Ubisoft has now announced thatHyper Scape’s development is ending, and that servers will be shutting down.The announcement was shared on social media Thursday morning in a blog post titled “A message regarding the future ofHyper Scape.” The post itself is short and to the point. The development team tellsHyper ScapeContendersthat it has made the decision to end further development ofHyper Scape. The team tells players that it’s extremely grateful to them for joining in on “our journey” and that it plans to take what it’s learned fromHyper Scapeon to future projects.RELATED:Major Hyper Scape Overhaul in the WorksTheHyper Scape serverswon’t be shutting down immediately, however. Ubisoft will be leaving servers open for some time yet, to allow players one last hoorah in the battle royale. The official shutdown date forHyper Scape’s serverswill be April 28, three months from now. While the servers closing down at all is obviously a frustrating and disappointing decision, particularly with regards to preservation and archival, Ubisoft could have simply shut the servers down immediately and is instead giving players a not insignificant amount of time with the game.
Ubisoft does also thank players for their “passion and dedication” toHyper Scapewhile development remained active. TheUbisoft developerssay that players' devotion toHyper Scapewill “always be cherished,” a heartfelt message from a team having to say goodbye to a game that its spent years of work on.
The writing has been on the wall forHyper Scapefor some time, as the battle royale’s community has been deeply aware. The last message shared byHyper Scapeon its Twitter account is dated June 30 and it highlights an officialHyper Scapecomic published by Dark Horse. The last game update, fromHyper ScapeSeason 3, is from April 2021 and largely focused on fixes and smaller updates.
Ubisoft, by all appearances, pulled the plug onHyper Scapein mid-2021. For players, today’s announcement is simply a confirmation that the lights are ready to be turned off. Thebattle royale marketisn’t easy to enter into anymore, as even Ubisoft couldn’t manage it. But the true loss of the day is forHyper Scapeplayers who have loved the game and will soon be without it.
Hyper Scapeis available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
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