Ubisoft's Forgotten Hyper Scape Battle Royale Is Shutting Down
You'd think that in today's online gaming culture, battle royale games would simply leap to the top of the pile and stay there. Maybe we're so blinded by the nigh-on immeasurable success of Fortnite to realise that it does take something of a magical formula to hit the big leagues.
Big developers and franchises naturally take to the skies, like the Call of Duty - adjacent Warzone, and EA's Apex Legends, something of a successor to Titanfall. But the grand and original ideas seem to struggle to maintain playerbases, like Naraka Bladepoint and CRSED: F.O.A.D, rather depressingly. Once again, a battle royale falls - but the good news is, nobody has really taken notice.
Is Hyper Scape Is Shutting Down?
After only making its debut in August 2020, Ubisoft's bold Hyper Scape is shutting down. The game was met with lukewarm critical attention and fans didn't stay attached to it for that long - that's probably why the game has finally decided to pack it up.
"We have made the difficult decision to end development of Hyper Scape and shut the game down as of April 28th," reads an announcement made on the Hyper Scape blog. "We set out to create a vertical, close-quarters, and fast-paced shooter experience and we are extremely grateful to our community for joining us on our journey.
Ubisoft concluded, "We will be taking key learnings from this game into future products." But, frankly, it's no surprise that the game is making the decision to bow out. It was a short-lived experiment into why slapping the genre of battle royale on something doesn't just work.
Hyper Scape Has Struggled For Some Time
For a while now, Hyper Scape hasn't been able to maintain a strong player base. Since over a year ago, fans were reporting a lot of cases of lobbies simply not filling, and posts in the game's subreddit from some time ago prove that worries of the game being "dead" have been active for some time.
It's sad that an ambitious title in the genre has struggled to keep players engaged, but sadly, it's just a symptom of the ultra-competitive battle royale space. Hyper Scape is dead, long live Hyper Scape.
