Steel Hunters: Wargaming’s Mech Battle Game Meets Its End

The live service bloodbath continues, and this time it claims Steel Hunters, the mech shooter from the makers of World of Tanks. Launched on April 2 as an early access title on Steam, Steel Hunters aimed to deliver Titanfall-esque experiences in a free-to-play, PvPvE format.

However, it failed to make any lasting impact, and just three months later, developer Wargaming announced plans to shut it down permanently by October 8.

In a somber post to the Steel Hunters community, Wargaming acknowledged that while the game had received passion and support, its development was unsustainable. “Today we share difficult news: we’ve made the decision to sunset Steel Hunters,” the statement read. “We know this isn’t the news anyone wanted to hear and we genuinely share in your disappointment.”

The game’s decline was swift. Steel Hunters launched with a modest peak of 4,479 concurrent players, but within just a few months, the player base had dwindled to a paltry 97 peak and 52 concurrent players at the time of this article’s publication. For any free-to-play title, these numbers are devastating.

Many players expressed their frustration on Steam, with the most prominent review coming from a player who had logged over 300 hours in the game. They praised the game’s mech design and maps but criticized Wargaming for failing to provide a roadmap, releasing updates at a glacial pace, and neglecting critical bug fixes. “Early access should have never happened,” the review read. “We should have never left beta. Time and time again the players have been vocal about changes or fixes that were needed, only to be met with ‘we are moving forward’ and then asked, ‘why did it go south?'”

Steel Hunters joins a growing list of live service games that have been abandoned, with many, like Sony’s Concord, costing developers hundreds of millions of dollars. Even Microsoft has gotten in on the trend, canceling an unannounced MMORPG from the makers of The Elder Scrolls Online, resulting in widespread layoffs.