While battle royale games have taken off in popularity the past couple of years, The Culling, released by developer Xaviant in 2016, has been in a difficult position as of late. As more and more battle royale titles launch and flood the market, it's become more difficult for most of these games to find success. In regards to Xaviant and The Culling, the sun will be setting for its online player base in the near future.
Come May 15, online servers for The Culling will be shutting off permanently. While the game still grants owners the ability to play offline, the lack of connectivity for a battle royale game is essentially the final nail in the coffin. The announcement comes from the game's official website, where Director of Operations Josh Van Veld opened up about The Culling's free-to-play option and how the development team had hoped for in-game purchases to help the studio continue to work on the game after its release. Unfortunately for Van Veld and Xaviant, this was not the case.
The lack of revenue being generated had at one point forced the team to quickly work on and stealth launch The Culling 2 last year. The game was received poorly from most all who played it, which forced Xaviant Games to quickly remove The Culling 2 from digital stores, as well as offer refunds to those who purchased the game.
Since the botched launch and lack of cash flow coming into the studio was apparent, it was made clear Xaviant Games was in trouble. It appears now that after a few months of soul searching and weighing options, the team sees it best to move on to a new project.
The Culling isn't the first game to fall to the wayside in the gluttony of the battle royale genre playlist. After the failed launch of arena shooter LawBreakers, the now-defunct studio Boss Key Productions released an early access version of Radical Heights, a battle royale title which only lasted few weeks before the developer was forced to shut its doors for good.
Stories like Radical Heights and The Culling likely aren't the last time we'll see studios fail to find success with a battle royale game. It's easy to look at games such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Call of Duty Black Ops 4, and more recently Apex Legends, to find the influence in the slew of battle royales being made. While The Culling did launch before PUBG and Fortnite were ever heard of, its lack of relevancy compared to the aforementioned titles shows how competitive the genre has become in a short amount of time.
The Culling is available on Linux, Windows, and Xbox One until May 15th, 2019.
Source: The Culling