Hello-Rez Studios has introduced the upcoming closure of two of its video games, Divine Knockout and Realm Royale Reforged, which will probably be taken offline in February 2025. The pending shutdowns come lower than a month after the studio laid off an unspecified variety of workers, saying on the time that the cuts have been obligatory “to make sure Hello-Rez’s long-term success.”
“It’s with a heavy coronary heart from all of us at Evil Mojo Video games that now we have to tell you that as a part of Hello-Rez’s latest re-org, Realm Royale will probably be sundown and the servers shut down on February 17, 2025,” the Realm Royale Reforged shutdown announcement states. “Following this date, the sport will probably be faraway from digital storefronts and you’ll now not be capable of buy it and any associated content material corresponding to DLC.”
A virtually similar shutdown announcement was posted on the Divine Knockout Steam web page.
Realm Royale launched into early entry on Steam in 2018 after which moved into open beta in early 2019. The Reforged replace arrived in 2022, “bringing again mechanics from Realm Royale’s earlier phases that gamers beloved, whereas constructing upon the enhancements and options that gamers are aware of in the present day.”
However whereas the Reforged replace sparked a short bump in gamers, and Realm Royale Reforged holds a “principally constructive” ranking throughout greater than 56,000 consumer evaluations, concurrent participant counts have been by no means nice: A really sturdy begin of greater than 105,000 concurrents when the sport launch shortly tailed off to some thousand, after which a number of hundred, gamers at a time; the concurrent participant rely over the previous 24 hours, based on SteamDB, was simply 402.
Divine Knockout, which arrived in December 2022, did not fare as nicely: Its total evaluate ranking is “blended” and its concurrent participant rely hasn’t damaged 100 since February. In-game content material for each video games was made “successfully free” earlier this yr, however the change had no significant influence on participant numbers.
That is not a very good state of affairs for any recreation to be in, and explicit when the writer seems to be struggling and retrenching: Within the announcement of layoffs earlier this month, Hello-Rez stated it has “determined to pay attention our efforts solely on Smite 2, outdoors of small groups supporting mild updates for Paladins and Smite 1.”
Smite 2 launched into early entry in August, however continues to lag nicely behind the unique by way of participant numbers: Its 24-hour peak concurrent participant rely was 1,974, in comparison with 7,285 for Smite. Concurrent participant numbers aren’t every thing, in fact—as we identified in 2022, video games are too usually declared “useless” when these numbers naturally lower over time. However it does look like Hello-Rez has struggled to land successful within the years since Smite and Paladins.
