to the surprise of no one
http://theculling.com/blog/2019/3/18/dev-diary-so-long-farewell
Josh Van Veld
Director of Operations
Xaviant
http://theculling.com/blog/2019/3/18/dev-diary-so-long-farewell
Dev Diary: So Long, Farewell!
Greetings Contestants!
The Culling has had a wild ride. Since the game's original launch in March of 2016, more than 3 million of you have tested your resolve on the island, with nearly half that number joining the fray since The Culling: Origins became free to play on Xbox One last November.
The game's servers have run continuously (with the stray outage here and there) for three years, but the time has come for us to announce that we will be taking The Culling offline on May 15th, 2019. While The Culling's offline modes will remain available after that date, online play and associated features will not. To that end, the game's store pages and in-app purchases will be disabled as soon as possible.
When we launched the Origins update and made the game free to play, our hope was that the revenue generated from in-app purchases would be enough to sustain our team and support ongoing development, but unfortunately that was not the case.
Even with thousands of active daily users, the revenue was only a fraction of what our dev team required to continue daily operations. As a result, we've been forced to reduce our team size, which renders us unable to provide ongoing support and updates that would allow the game to grow and thrive.
If there is a team out there who is interested in taking the reins from us and exploring the game's potential, please contact us at [email protected]. We think that with the proper resources and know-how in the free to play world, the right group could make great things happen.
While it's sad for us to say goodbye, we want to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has enjoyed the game, contributed feedback, and spent their hard-earned money to support our efforts over the years. The Culling has always been a labor of love, a learning experience, and an opportunity to pursue our passion for making games.
Greetings Contestants!
The Culling has had a wild ride. Since the game's original launch in March of 2016, more than 3 million of you have tested your resolve on the island, with nearly half that number joining the fray since The Culling: Origins became free to play on Xbox One last November.
The game's servers have run continuously (with the stray outage here and there) for three years, but the time has come for us to announce that we will be taking The Culling offline on May 15th, 2019. While The Culling's offline modes will remain available after that date, online play and associated features will not. To that end, the game's store pages and in-app purchases will be disabled as soon as possible.
When we launched the Origins update and made the game free to play, our hope was that the revenue generated from in-app purchases would be enough to sustain our team and support ongoing development, but unfortunately that was not the case.
Even with thousands of active daily users, the revenue was only a fraction of what our dev team required to continue daily operations. As a result, we've been forced to reduce our team size, which renders us unable to provide ongoing support and updates that would allow the game to grow and thrive.
If there is a team out there who is interested in taking the reins from us and exploring the game's potential, please contact us at [email protected]. We think that with the proper resources and know-how in the free to play world, the right group could make great things happen.
While it's sad for us to say goodbye, we want to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has enjoyed the game, contributed feedback, and spent their hard-earned money to support our efforts over the years. The Culling has always been a labor of love, a learning experience, and an opportunity to pursue our passion for making games.
Josh Van Veld
Director of Operations
Xaviant
