Velan Studios’ PvP dodgeball game Knockout City has garnered a sizeable fanbase since its launch nearly two years ago, but it looks like the game is not going to be around for much longer. The developer has announced that on June 6, Knockout City will be shutting down?
Why? In a nutshell, Velan Studios doesn’t have the manpower or resources to update and improve the game in the ways it wants to while also maintaining consistent support for it. The studio is, as such, deciding to take the knowledge it has gathered from over the course of the game’s development and its post-launch period and apply it to its next project- which may or may not be a new Knockout City game.
“Creating such a different game with no points of comparison and running live services for the first time in many of our careers has also made the past couple years particularly challenging,” the developer writes. “Despite over 12 million players and billions of KOs around the globe, there are several aspects of the game in need of major disruption to better attract and retain enough players to be sustainable. Since we are a small, indie studio, it’s simply impossible for us to make those kinds of systemic changes in the live game while continuing to support it. So it became clear to us that we needed to take a step back and pave the way for Velan to do what we do best by innovating.
“Now we can take everything we learned, everything that succeeded and everything that needs improvement, and get to work on exploring new possible experiences for Knockout City and other games and products we are very excited about. We’re currently in the process of doing a comprehensive retrospective on every aspect of the game, all the community feedback and analytics data, and even our development processes. Our hope is that sometime in the not-too-distant future, all this information can be used to start work on what comes next in the Knockout City universe. While we can’t promise that Knockout City will be back, what we can promise is that you’ll continue to see new and innovative games from Velan Studios that will surprise and delight players around the world.”
Before the game goes offline though, it’s set to receive plenty of updates for those who want to stick around and keep playing until the end. On February 28, the game’s ninth and final season will kick off, bringing six back-to-back events, new cosmetics, playlists, a new map, and more. On the same day, the game will also disable microtransactions.
“To make up for this, we’ve packed every event in Season 9 with rewards for XP, Style Chips, and thousands of Holobux,” Velan Studios writes. “Every event also features a massive sale shop with huge discounts, and almost every cosmetic we’ve ever sold will make its way into one of these sale shops. The rewards for League Play, Daily Login Bonuses, and the Brawl Pass have also been drastically increased, and the price of the Premium Brawl Pass will be reduced to just 50 Holobux (which you can easily earn in the Free Pass).”
Season 9 will end on May 23, which will also mark the beginning of a final two-week farewell event, featuring triple XP, new rewards, and the return of the Superpowers: Power Grab playlist. Finally, on June 6, the game’s servers will go offline, rendering it unplayable. That said, Velan Studios will also be releasing releasing a standalone player-hosted version of the game, for those who want to keep playing on private servers even after the game has shut down.
Knockout City is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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