In a heartfelt message on the Turtle Rock Studios forums, Phill Robb and Chris Ashton broke the news that development on Evolve, the 4v1 monster hunter, has ended. This doesn't mean that the servers are shutting down, just that further content updates, bug fixes, and balance changes are a no go. In a reply to the server query in the forum thread, Ashton stated, "That'll all be up to 2K on out, the same as anything Left 4 Dead related is in Valve's hands."
Evolve faced a quickly dwindling player base when it launched, which prompted an unsurprising relaunch as a free-to-play game in Evolve: Stage 2. Despite enjoying it the first and second time around, it's apparent that the F2P experiment wasn't quite the success needed to keep Evolve afloat. According to Steam Charts, the average active players have nearly halved in every month since the launch of Stage 2, sitting at just under 1700 as of today. The numbers dived so quickly, they won't even be able to bring Stage 2 to consoles as originally planned. Lucky us, I suppose.
Turtle Rock isn't done as a studio though. They claim to"have lots of stuff in the works," but chances are it won't involve the combination of monsters, hunters, and asymmetry.
To say goodbye to the Evolve community, Turtle Rock is hosting a final livestream Q&A event on Thursday, October 27 at 12pm PT.
