Time-bending multiplayer FPS Lemnis Gate won't reach its second birthday. An update from Ratloop Games and Frontier Foundry, posted yesterday, has informed the game's players that the game will be removed from sale on April 11 pending the final shutdown of its multiplayer servers on July 11, a few months short of September 28, the would-be second anniversary of its release.
For PC players, July 11 will be the last possible opportunity to play Lemnis Gate at all, according to the update from the devs. While console players will be able to "access local multiplayer and training modes" on their machines seemingly in perpetuity, PC players will "be unable to play beyond that point". Some players in the comments on the announcement are begging the devs to enable local play on PC after the game dies, but there's been no sign of a response yet. Hard luck if you only recently bought the game, I guess.
To be fair, the likelihood that anyone has forked over the cash for Lemnis Gate in the last couple of months is actually pretty slim. The game last went on sale—for 60% off—in October last year, and since then its simultaneous player count has barely ever managed to hit a double digit figure. At time of writing, SteamDB lists five players in-game. It's not hard to see why the studio is pulling the plug.
But while it's not a surprise, it is a shame. Lemnis Gate was an interesting and innovative FPS whose core mechanic—using time shenanigans to disrupt your opponent's plays in previous rounds—felt very fresh and very weird when it released in 2021. Robert Zak scored the game 84% in his Lemnis Gate review for PCG at the time, with particular praise for its "smart strategizing" and "dextrous gunplay," but noting even back then that it suffered from low player counts that made finding a game hard.
It's been a bit of a bloodbath when it comes to game shutdowns in recent years. Lemnis Gate joins the dubious ranks of games like Hyperscape, Babylon's Fall, Fuser, and a whole host of other games that have moved to a nice farm upstate in the last year or so. Let's hope this is the one that finally ends the streak?
