2K Games to Shut Down Evolve Servers

We already knew that Turtle Rock, the developer behind Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike: Source, was shutting down their attempt at an asymmetric 1v4 multiplayer game, Evolve. They already announced that they were ending support for the game, and now the publisher, 2K Games, has told the gaming public that the true shut-down process is going to begin later this year.

Come September, dedicated servers will stop running, which means that there will be no more ranked matches, leaderboards, and most vitally, the in-game store. At the exact same time, Evolve Stage 2, the free-to-play version of the game, will shut down completely. DLC content that’s been purchased will still be available, like monsters and skins and the like, but everything else will be out of player’s hands forever.

The game will still technically be playable, but without servers, you’ll need to rely on peer-to-peer matchmaking in the original version of the game: which will allow you to do Quick Play, Custom matches, and evacuation mode (which is a best-of-five match), either with friends or solo with AI companions. So while the game won’t well and truly be “dead,” it will be a skeleton of the game it once was, running at very little cost for 2K, which will likely mean it will enjoy a few more years of functioning before it’s taken offline entirely.

It’s sad, but not surprising, that Evolve would wind up this way. Turtle Rock resisted the allure of a free-to-play game for far too long, and by the time they made the inevitable switch, it was too late, kind of like what happened to Battleborn, now that I think about it. Regardless, the studio is still hard at work on their next project, which is looking to be very similar to L4D from what we’ve heard about it so far, so we’ll have to hope, for their sake, it turns out better than this.