Amazon has popped up late Friday night to inform everyone that the grim reaper has visited their gaming studios again, and this time the report is that Crucible is dead.
Why is Crucible dead?
In short, Crucible is dead because it failed to acquire an audience earlier this year when it launched, and none of the improvements that the development team made were able to bring the game to a state in closed beta that was believed to make the game likely to have a different reception on re-release.
Announced as Amazon's second title to launch (Breakaway had an open beta that led to its cancelation), Crucible launched opposing Valorant in the hero shooter genre. While Valorant was racking up users, Crucible stumbled out of the gate, not helped any by poor comparisons to Riot Games' shooter, and it received poor reviews, and an audience that quickly deserted it. By the end of June, the team had killed off two of the game modes to focus on the most popular one, and there were less than 200 players at peak times.
On June 30th, the team took the extremely rare step of announcing that Crucible would be going into a closed beta, with only those who had played the game having access to the closed beta. According to them this was to "help us focus on providing the best possible experience for our players as we continue to make the game better", with them noting that they planned to set aside specific times each week to play with the community and hear their feedback, as they continued to work on that previously announced roadmap.
In today's post, the Crucible team says that once they had finished the roadmap (with the sole exception of custom games), they listened to feedback from players and evaluated the game based on that in conjunction with other data they collected. This led them to decide that they were best off discontinuing development on Crucible. They further elaborated:
That evaluation led us to a difficult decision: we’ll be discontinuing development on Crucible. We very much appreciate the way that our fans have rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible.
What Happens to Crucible Now?
Crucible's servers will shut down on November 9th at noon Pacfic, but before that the team intends to celebrate the game with the community. Over the next month there will be a final playtest in the lead up to a big community celebration event that will take place in-game and on the official discord. During this time, they'll also finish the custom games off and add those to Crucible for folks to play with. After the community celebration date, matchmaking will be taken offline in the lead up to the final shutdown, but custom games will remain playable until then on November 9th.
For players who have made any purchases, the team promises that they will be able to get a full refund, and that they are disabling any more purchases as of now. As for the team that made Crucible they are being moved onto Amazon's lead project right now, the MMO New World, and other upcoming projects by Amazon Games.
How can I get a Crucible refund?
If you have purchased anything related to Crucible you are eligible for a full refund. If you bought the founder's pack or credits from Steam, Amazon directs you to contact Steam Support. If you bought a founder's pack from Amazon, you can use the Contact Us button on their support page to receive your refund. In either case, they suggest having your order number ready.
What do you think of Crucible's death? Do you think there was ever a place for it? Can Amazon Games ever launch a successful game? Let us know in the comments below.
