Free-to-play extraction shooter The Cycle: Frontier shuts down in September, developer Yager has announced.
Yager, developer of Spec Ops: The Line and Dreadnought, set the shutdown for September 27, 2023, calling the decision “very difficult” but “necessary”. Real money purchases are now disabled. Any purchases made from June 13 will be refunded.
The Cycle: Frontier is described as a “competitive quest shooter”, with player versus environment versus player combat. It launched in early access form in 2019, before launching proper last year.
“We are incredibly grateful for all your support during this wonderful journey, we couldn’t have done it without you!” Yager said in a tweet. “From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.”
Expanding on the decision in a blog post, Yager said The Cycle: Frontier was not “financially viable”.
“Despite our best efforts and meaningful improvements brought to the game since launch and up until the release of Season 3, the reality is that The Cycle: Frontier is unfortunately not financially viable,” the developer said in a statement.
So what went wrong? Yager said The Cycle: Frontier started strong, but soon faced “many challenges”, the “most crucial” being the increasing number of cheaters shortly after the game went live.
“Although we had tools and measurements in place, we quickly realized we needed to improve our anti-cheat efforts to be able to ensure a fair game experience for all players,” Yager explained. “By the time we got additional partners onboard for our anti-cheat efforts and could focus again on gameplay and performance improvements for The Cycle: Frontier, many of you had already been affected and as a result we saw a significant decrease in our player base.”
Following this, Season 2 failed to generate enough attention to kickstart the game again. In response, Yager took steps to make The Cycle: Frontier more approachable, which sparked a modest increase in players alongside the launch of Season 3 in March, but, as Yager admits, “it was still not enough to make The Cycle: Frontier financially viable.”
The Cycle: Frontier will be unplayable from September 27, Yager confirmed. The developer said it “strongly considered” making the game available to everyone so it could be played offline, possibly on private servers, but decided this wasn’t feasible.
“The Cycle: Frontier is a server-based game with a dedicated backend system, which doesn’t allow keeping the game somewhat available after being shut down,” Yager said.
Yager said it will now shift focus to new projects, although it has yet to announce any new games in development. Yager’s free-to-play spaceship combat game Dreadnought remains available to play.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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