If there’s one thing you can count on to happen one way or another, it’s wrestling. Even when most sports are canceled, Wrestlemania still went on earlier in the month, and both WWE and new promotion AEW are running shows weekly, albeit in empty venues. But it does seem like there’s a rare tap out this year, as it’s been confirmed that the annual WWE 2K series would not have an entry this year.

At the company’s most recent earning call, WWE said that there would be no WWE 2K21, making it potentially the first time in over 20 years that there hasn’t been an annual WWE licensed release. This comes after WWE 2K20 was a huge disappointment, both critically and financially last year.

It was rumored recently that 2K21 was canceled, so this isn’t a huge surprise. Interestingly enough, that report also stated that there would be another WWE title released in its place. At this point, no other alternative title has been announced. Right now, it looks like we may just be without a WWE game this year all together.

Last year’s WWE 2K20 was nothing short of a disaster. The game launched in a broken state that, even by the franchise’s glitchy standards, was of shockingly poor quality. Even parent company Take-Two Interactive commented on the overall poor quality of the release, and how it affected sales. It now seems that this year’s title could be canceled, and perhaps something else is in the pipeline.

Justin Leeper, a former writer for the WWE 2K series, took to his official YouTube to tell people he had heard that this year’s version was quietly canceled. Apparently, there is another WWE title coming this year, but he doesn’t go into detail about it outside it being a different type of title than the 2K series and from a different developer. He claims there’s still a lot of issues to work out for Visual Concepts after their split with Yuke’s, as well as production being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. While Leeper no longer works on the series or at any company associated with it, he claims to still talk to people actively working on the franchise.

As always with rumors of these nature, take it with a grain of salt. Nothing sounds too implausible here, but there’s a few red flags. Primarily, he points to the lack of talk about a new game at this year’s Wrestlemania as signs of a cancellation, but WWE starts marketing their games later in the year closer to the Summerslam event. It also seems unlikely that another title is going to be ready to drop this year unless it’s of a very small scale.  After the disaster of 2K20, it may be for the best if this ends up being true, however. A year off could make a big difference.

https://youtu.be/4w_sRieIEiA