Knockout City, the team-based ‘dodgebrawler’ from Velan Studios and EA, is going to be shut down on 6 June 2023. It becomes the latest in a long line of live service games being sunsetted, following within the footsteps of EA’s own Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile, in addition to Rumbleverse, and Fuser.
The game was initially launched in mid-2023, and achieved success largely because of its high-speed gameplay, colourful aesthetic, and breezy sense of fun. Regardless of this, it seems the game did not attain the longevity it aimed for.
‘On the morning of June 6, 2023, over two years after our initial launch, all servers around the world will be turn off and the game will no longer be playable,’ Velan Studios announced in a article. ‘This was a extremely difficult decision for us, but an essential and important one for our studio.’
‘After 2 yrs of live operations, we've learned a lot about Knockout City and live games generally. It's been a truly rewarding experience growing the game each season … Creating this type of different game without any points of comparison and running live services for the first time in lots of of our careers has additionally made the past couple years particularly challenging.’
‘Despite over 12 million players and vast amounts of KOs around the world, there are several aspects of the sport looking for major disruption to better attract and retain enough players to become sustainable. Since we're a little, indie studio, it's simply impossible for all of us to make those types of systemic changes in the live game while continuing to aid it.’
The Velan Studios team has promised to take everything they’ve learned from Knockout City and focus on ‘new possible experiences for Knockout City and other games’.
While players it's still in a position to jump into Knockout City to play through Season 9, a 12-week event featuring new cosmetics and playlists, this can mark no more the game.
Notably, within the final sign-off from Velan, the studio confirmed that Knockout City wouldn’t go away entirely – unlike other live service games. Players it's still able to connect to the experience by hosting their own offline servers, as fully endorsed by Velan.
While player-led offline servers usually appear around defunct games, companies rarely support these endeavours – so it’s a refreshing switch to see Velan acknowledge the practice, and give it a proper blessing. This will make sure that Knockout City lives on for as long as players wish to ensure that it stays alive.
Knockout City will begin winding down features from 28 February 2023, with the official servers being shut down permanently on 6 June 2023. Make sure to pop into the game for final multiplayer rounds ahead of this date.
