Developer Xaviant announced the studio will be taking its battle royale game The Culling offline. The official end date for The Culling is set for May 15, when all online play, including associated features, will no longer be available. Further, the store pages and in-app purchases will be discontinued. Offline modes will remain accessible even after May 15.
Director of Operations Josh Van Veld said in a statement that while this is a sad occasion for the company, they “want to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has enjoyed the game, contributed feedback, and spent their hard-earned money to support our efforts over the years.”
The Culling was developed by Xaviant after the company saw that battle royale games were starting to gain popularity. Most early battle royale games were mods of existing games and, by coming out with their own game, Xaviant believed that it would be the first to offer a standalone game in the genre. The Culling was released in Steam in March 2016 and, as expected, went on to become one of the top ten games played on Steam. The year 2017 would see the release of Fortnite Battle Royale, which would begin many of Xaviant's problems. In particular, The Culling’s player count started to go down. By the time PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds released and increased in popularity, Xaviant would make the decision to stop any future development for their own game.
Xaviant would try to make a comeback to the genre by releasing a sequel, despite the rising popularity of Fortnite. The Culling 2 faced many criticisms from players, the majority of which claimed The Culling 2 was was difficult to find other players to get a complete match.
In the same statement, Van Veld said that when they made the game free to play, there was the expectation “that the revenue generated from in-app purchases would be enough to sustain our team and support ongoing development, but unfortunately that was not the case.”
The revenue generated from the remaining active daily users, he added, would not be enough to ensure the daily operations of the development team. In order to continue running the game, the company had no choice but to lower the size of the development team. This resulted, according to Van Veld, in the company being “unable to provide ongoing support and updates that would allow the game to grow and thrive.”
Van Veld said that Xaviant is willing to transfer control of The Culling to any team that believes in the potential of the game.
