Without any prior warning, gory chess game Warhammer 40,000: Regicide has been delisted from Steam and mobile storefronts. The game's servers have also been shut down, and although offline play remains accessible if you've already bought the game, you can't pick it up from any of the stores on which it was previously available anymore.
Warhammer 40k: Regicide was originally released back in 2015. In our review, we described it as a "gloriously violent and refreshing reimagining of chess". Now, however, it seems that if you haven't already purchased Regicide, you won't be able to experience that gloriously violent and refreshing reimagining.
On the official Regicide Steam page, developer Hammerfall confirms the "immediate closure" of Warhammer 40,000: Regicide's servers, as well as the delisting of the game from Steam, the Google Play Store, and the iOS App Store. You can see how the final rankings stand for competitive Regicide and classic chess right here. Congratulations, Noshrok and ZhukoDim, for you will forever be remembered as the victors.
Hammerfall does confirm that Warhammer 40k: Regicide will still be playable offline for "prior installs", so presumably you'll still be able to download it if it's already in your Steam library. However, online servers won't work anymore, so you won't be able to head into the competitive online modes anymore. The devs say they're moving on to "new and exciting projects" in the future, so we'll doubtless hear more about those projects in the coming months.
Server shutdowns can be a serious problem for game preservation. Earlier this year, for instance, Capcom announced it would shut down Mega Man Powered Up's servers, thus destroying a huge amount of user-created content for the game. Where games can't be played offline, such as in the case of gacha RPG Dragalia Lost, the entire game effectively disappears when servers are closed down.
In this instance, Hammerfall assures players that its game can still be played offline, which is likely a comfort of sorts. There's also the possibility that players who still have the game can start up their own private servers if they wish. We'll have to wait and see what happens with Regicide, but one thing's for sure: the game as you knew it is dead. We'll bring you more as we get it.
