Multiplayer Survival Game Scavengers to Shut Down Next Month

ign.com:

Improbable has announced that it's shutting down its free-to-play multiplayer game Scavengers on December 16, simply because not enough people are playing the game.

"The last few months have seen a decline in the player base, and whilst we explored many options to reinvigorate server population while the game is in Early Access, it became clear that it was unsustainable to continue development and live service," Improbable said in a statement on its website.

"We’re all proud of what we accomplished, and are grateful to every player who took the time to play, even if it was just for a short while."

Scavengers was developed by Midwinter Entertainment and the game launched into Early Access on Steam back in May 2021. It's had a fairly turbulent development cycle as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions were canceled earlier this year, due to Improbable selling Midwinter Entertainment to Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive as it focused instead on metaverse development.

The PC version was promised to remain unaffected at the time, but Scavenger's numbers were already struggling, only having a few hundred players since November last year according to Steam DB.

Scavengers was first announced in 2018 from former Halo developers from 343 Industries and released several demos and tests for the game before finally launching in Early Access, though a full version of the game will seemingly never be released.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He's been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey