SOS, the battle royale you can win with your voice, is closing in November

SOS looked like an interesting twist on the battle royale genre when it appeared last year. Instead of just shooting at each other, players were also encouraged to interact with the audience, which could throw support to its favorites if sufficiently entertained. Evan found it quite promising in his December preview, calling his relic-hunting partnership with a "convincing, quirky" Christopher Walken roleplayer "one of my gaming highlights of the year."

But that positive early impression wasn't enough to attract a mass audience, and developer Outpost Games announced today that the game will go offline on November 12.

"After much deliberation, we have decided to shut down SOS. This will affect both SOS and SOS: Classic. This was an extremely difficult decision to make, but one that, sadly, is necessary," Outpost wrote.

"From the very beginning, we set out to create an experience with SOS that would resonate both with players and audiences. Unfortunately, through multiple iterations of SOS, we were unable to fully realize this goal and engage players and viewers in the way we had hoped. For that, we are sorry."

The servers will stay online until November 12, but "matchmaking speed and quality will be largely dependent on player counts," Outpost said.

Those player counts have never been very high. Despite an amusing, no-hands assist from Snoop Dogg in January, SOS peaked in March with an average concurrent player count of 696 (2589 peak), but that number crashed to 133 in April, and just 38 in May.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.