PUBG-Like Battle Royale Game The Culling Not Getting More Updates
PUBG has taken the gaming world by storm since its release on PC back in March, but it wasn’t the first Battle Royale game to hit the market. Lichdom: Battlemage developer Xaviant Games launched its own Battle Royale game, The Culling, on Steam Early Access a year before PUBG came out. But whereas PUBG has exploded in popularity, The Culling hasn’t, and now Xaviant has announced plans to end support for the title.
In a blog post, Xaviant’s direct of operations, Josh Van Veld, said it is no longer focusing on The Culling but instead a new project. As such, Xaviant is not planning any future updates for The Culling. However, the game’s servers will stay online “for the foreseeable future.” The Culling is available on PC, as well as Xbox One through the Game Preview program.
Van Veld went on to say in his blog post that when Xaviant started development on The Culling in May 2015, the battle royale genre was “barely a blip on the radar” for most gamers. “Even our early internal play tests told us we had something special on our hands,” Van Veld said. “While there were hundreds of great PvP games out there, The Culling exhibited a special intensity that immediately hooked us.”
He added that Xaviant feels a sense of pride for helping grow the battle royale genre, even if its own game didn’t light up the market in the way that PUBG has.
“While we’re excited to be working on something new, it’s also bittersweet to be moving on,” Van Veld said, noting that Xaviant only has 20 employees. “The Culling has been a wonderful experience for us and so much of that is thanks to our passionate community of players. We got to know a great many of you through various channels and we watched on the edge of our seats as you organized tournaments, streamed yourselves seeking glory, and assembled videos that told your stories.”
As for what’s next for Xaviant, Van Veld said it’s too early to talk specifics. He did, however, acknowledge that the studio will try to “apply all of the lessons we learned (both good and bad) from The Culling to make something very special and just as dear to our hearts.”
Like PUBG and Fornite: Battle Royale, The Culling is a battle royale game where players fight to the death until only one remains standing. The game has a smaller scale than PUBG or Fornite, as it’s only 16 players duking it out.