The Culling 2 is coming

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Xaviant announced the game just six months after halting development of The Culling.

Developer Xaviant pulled the plug on the battle royale game The Culling in December 2017, just a couple of months after taking it from Early Access to full release. Today, the studio revealed that a sequel, The Culling 2, is now in development. 

There are no details yet beyond the tweet and the fact that the account is now called The Culling 2, but it's a surprising move for Xaviant to make. The average concurrent player count of The Culling when development was ended was 14, and it hadn't been above double digits since May 2017. And it's not as though the battle royale genre has become less crowded and competitive since then: The Culling's player count started tanking right around the time we described Fortnite as "a fun but bloated base defense shooter," and we all know what's happened since then.

(And if you don't know, the short version is that Fortnite is a juggernaut and there are plenty of other smaller-but-good BR games to choose from too.)

I also wonder if the quickness with which Xaviant hit the brakes on The Culling (and to be clear, the servers are still up, so it's not dead, just abandoned) will work against it, particularly with work on a sequel beginning so soon after. If nothing else, it doesn't strike me as a good look.

I've reached out to Xaviant to ask about its plans for the new game and will update if I receive a reply. Either way, I expect we'll be hearing more about The Culling 2 very soon.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

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.