Die Zeichen stehen nicht gut für die Arena-Action Battlerite: Laut eines Statements von Entwickler Sunlock Studios könnte es sich bei der am 10. Juli startenden Saison um die letzte handeln. Sinkende Spielerzahlen hätten dazu geführt, dass der Entwicklungsaufwand zurückgefahren wird.
Battlerite has been a project that has gone through a lot of evolution and change within the past four years of development. From its inception as the successor to Bloodline Champions, to an Early Access launch that blew expectations out of the water, to a Free to Play launch that shattered the previous concurrent player record. There have been new Champions, new events, new tournaments and leagues, and a lot of memories and friends made.
Throughout it all, Battlerite became a defining identity: not just for the studio, but also for the people who work here in office on it every day and for the people who play it online.
We love Battlerite. And we know that you do too. But today we’re announcing that we will be scaling back on development, and things will be changing moving forward.
With the state of the current playerbase we’re no longer in a position where working on Battlerite and Battlerite Royale are sustainable as main projects for the studio. We’ve seen declining player numbers and player investment for a while now, and diminishing returns on all of our latest gameplay changes and marketing campaigns. While players are willing to try out Battlerite and Battlerite Royale for a while, retaining them has always been our biggest challenge.
Battle Season 3 and the associated Battle Pass will be the last that we have planned for the foreseeable future. We are exploring ideas for development after Battle Season 3, and will announce any potential plans closer to the end of the Season. The servers regardless will stay online.
With this in mind, we wanted to share what plans we currently have for Battlerite and Battlerite Royale.
Battle Season 3
Battle Season 3 will go live on July 10th as planned, and will include more tiers and items to earn in the Free and Premium Passes than before. It will be a longer season, and we’re making a bunch of community-requested changes with it, including:
- Removing both Armory and Overload from Casual and League (with both being options in Private Matches)
- Increasing Champion levels (though no rewards will be given past level 20)
- Changing Casual back to Best of 5
Besides this, we’ve created a Public Custom Lobby list for Arena to allow players to more easily find matches with each other. You’ll be able to customize these games with the same settings you have in Private Games.
We will be updating the pricing for Champions and the All Champion’s Pack. Champions will cost a maximum of 500 Gems or Diamonds and the All Champion’s Pack will have their prices lowered by 50% as of the July 10th patch – this is why we decided not to take part in the Steam Summer Sale.
Finally, there will be Event Quests for the first three weeks of the Season – completing the Trials of the Sun God quests will reward Legendary Outfits and Epic Weapons, and there will be two other Epic Outfits and Weapons that can be purchased directly.
The remaining changes and more details will be outlined in the Patch Notes next week.
After Battle Season 3
Battle Season 3 is slated to end on Wednesday, October 23rd. Additional details about development plans for the games will be outlined as we approach this date.
Unfinished Projects
There were a lot of things that we weren’t able to finish, the most notable of these being the Tournament System, which has been in production for a long, long time now. Unfortunately this seems to be the end of the project, and it remains to be one of our greatest regrets for Battlerite that we weren’t able to complete it for you.
From the Studio
On our end we’ll keep looking at how to serve the games and what’s possible for them while we move on to the next project. We’ll be taking everything we’ve learned from Battlerite – what worked, what didn’t work, what we could have done better, and more – to the next game and growing from it all. You’ll hear from us again in the future on the future development plans for Battlerite and when our next project is ready.
From everyone here at Stunlock Studios, thank you again for your years of support.
/The Stunlock Team“
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