After a year of struggling to pull in players, the PvPvE game Wildgate is calling it quits. Game director Dustin Browder said in a Steam update posted today that despite the best efforts of developer Moonshot Games, "Wildgate hasn’t found a large enough audience to sustain ongoing development," and so it's ending further updates.
"Wildgate is not going away," Browder wrote. "Wildgate will continue to receive occasional updates like bug fixes, balance updates, and small events, activations or rewards that generally repurpose existing content. And new players will still be able to buy the game on all platforms
(Steam, EGS, Xbox, and PS)—and we plan on participating in as many sales and discounts as we can."
Despite landing with unmistakable finality, Browder appeared to leave the door open for a comeback, writing that the new patch coming in July will be the game's "last big patch for a while." The update also aims to ensure "you can keep playing," with changes including additional information on game modes, additional player-controlled options for custom modes, new sprays and items in the in-game store, and a range of balance changes and bug fixes.
It's not clear how the end of Wildgate development will impact Moonshot Games. Browder said "a small core team will keep an eye on servers," but "community management and player support for the game will be reduced," and the Wildgate Discord will be turned over to members of the community. That doesn't sound good for the future of Moonshot, but a spokesperson told PC Gamer that layoffs are not planned.
"All of us at Moonshot put a lot of love into Wildgate as well as the community that has formed around it," the rep said. "The core Wildgate team will continue to spend some time reviewing issues and supporting the game long-term.
"No layoffs are planned. Members of the Moonshot team are transitioning from Wildgate to work on new projects. We're not ready to talk about them yet, but we're excited to share with players when the time is right."
It's an unfortunate but not really surprising outcome for yet another multiplayer shooter trying and failing to find space in an overcrowded genre. Wildgate showed early promise but couldn't quite stick the landing: "It's one of the most creative shooters I've played in a while, but at times I think the entire concept is better on paper than it is as a game," Tyler Colp wrote in his 60% review.
"At its best, Wildgate can create an entire story arc as your team rises in power, overcomes unforeseen obstacles, and eventually beats the odds. At its worst, Wildgate gives you 30-minute slogs where nobody is quite sure what to do until another more coordinated team dismantles your ship before you can even react."
And while Wildgate was pretty well received by players on Steam, where it holds a "mostly positive" user rating, the audience tailed away quickly after launch, and despite multiple subsequent updates including PvE-focused modes and the launch of a free trial version, it never came back. Hopefully the studio will have better luck with its next endeavour.
