Velan Studios has announced that they will be shutting down their dodge-ball multiplayer game, Knockout City, in June.
The studio announced last February that Knockout City goes free to play and says goodbye to Electronic Arts, who originally published the game as an EA Originals title, to self-publish future content for the game. That thing The free launch took place last June at the start of Season 6 and now, Velan has announced that they will be shutting down the game in June of this year. More specifically, Knockout City will be shutting down on June 6.
“We’re announcing today that Season 9 will be Knockout City’s final season,” Knockout City director Jeremy Russo wrote in an article. blog post. “Then, on the morning of June 6, 2023, more than two years after our initial launch, all servers worldwide will be down and the game will no longer be playable.”
Russo writes that the final season of the game will be filled with new content, an “epic send-off both inside and outside the game” and even a private server version on PC so institutional players can enjoy Knockout City. their own server forever.
As for why, Russo writes that Velan has learned a lot about live multiplayer games through Knockout City and that despite the 12 million players and billions of KOs in the game, “there are some that aspect of the game needs a major hiatus to better attract and retain enough players to grow sustainably.”
“Since we’re a small, indie studio, we simply couldn’t make those systemic changes in the game live while continuing to support it,” Russo continued. “So it was 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, Velan plans to take everything it’s learned during Knockout City’s lifecycle and apply it to “other games and products we’re excited about.” Russo writes that the team is currently in the process of doing “a comprehensive retrospective of every aspect of the game, all community feedback and analytics, even our development process.” with the hope that “sometime in the not too distant future”. In the future, all of this information can be used to start working on what’s next in the Knockout City universe.”
On February 28, 2023, Season 9 of Knockout City will begin with the last planned update, Version 9.0. Season 9 will run for 12 weeks with six consecutive events showcasing some of the studio’s most innovative cosmetics, fresh changes to several fan-favorite playlists, an event focused solely on into League Play and two super big Midnight Madness weeks where the community will choose two playlists they want to play to wrap up last season. There will be a new map to accompany the new Brawl Pass and Deep Space storyline.
On the same day, all real money transactions will be removed from the game. However, to make up for this, Velan says they’ve packed every Season 9 event with XP rewards, Style Chips, and thousands of Holobux. Russo writes that every event will feature a massive discount store with huge discounts, and that almost every cosmetic the team has created will appear in store at some point in Season 9.
“On May 23, shortly after our two-year anniversary, Season 9 ends and our final 2-week farewell event begins, which we call Thank You for KO,” Russo wrote. “This will be Knockout City’s ultimate in-game celebration, with Triple XP, massive rewards, and the return of community favorites playlist, Superpowers: Power Grab. Then, at 12 midnight. UTC June 6, 2023, the event will end and all servers will be down forever.”
Russo ended the blog post with a big thank you to all of the Knockout City players, which you can read in full below:
On a personal note, the announcement of the end of Knockout City was a bittersweet moment for me. While this is the end of a two-year journey for some of you, me and some of the others on the team have lived in Knockout City for over six years. I’m so proud of the team at Velan for creating such a wild new game with such critical acclaim at launch, for creating a brand new engine from scratch capable of doing such things. work that no other engine can do over the internet, for creating what I think are some of the most creative (and fun) cosmetics of any live game on the market, and for keep the game running, growing and improving for two consecutive years. I’m also grateful to all of you, players, for being the most active and supportive gaming community any of us have ever seen, for taking the time to chat with us on Discord. , Twitch and other places, for teaching me new things. my own in-game trick every time you take me down in a match and for putting up with me when I put that Trick button is a bit too much!
Thank you brawlers for all your passion and support over the past few years. I hope you all enjoy the final season of Knockout City and I’ll see you there!
We really enjoyed Knockout City when we re-evaluated it in 2021, giving it an 8.5 out of 10. You can read more Game Info right assessment This. We even call it best sports game of 2021.
The news of Knockout City’s shutdown joins a bunch of other news this week about games shutting down. EA announced earlier this week that it closed Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobileand on the same day, Iron Galaxy Studios’ Rumbleverse announced it will also stop working.
Are you jumping into the final season of Knockout City? Let us know in the comments below!
