Evolve shutting down dedicated servers and free-to-play branch in September

Remember Evolve, the 4v1 multiplayer shooter about hunting down giant, human-controlled monsters? Player numbers dwindled soon after its 2015 release, and later that year developer Turtle Rock Studios ended support for the game. Now, publisher 2K Games has announced that it plans to pull the plug on a number of its key features.

In September, dedicated servers will stop running, which means no more ranked play, no more leaderboards, and no more in-game store. At the same time, Evolve Stage 2—the free-to-play branch of the game—will shut down entirely. Players will keep any DLC content they've paid for, such as monsters, skins, and hunters.

You'll still be able to play it, but only through peer-to-peer matchmaking in Legacy Evolve, which is the original version of the game—Stage 2 became the main version after it launched.

Legacy Evolve contains Quick Play, which features all game modes other than ranked play, as well as custom games and Evacuation mode, where you play a series of five games as either a monster or a hunter. You'll also be able to play solo against AI opponents.

While Evolve won't be fully dead, it'll be on its last legs. It's a shame, really: as Evan said in his review, it had bags of potential.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.