Less than two years in and battle-royale Hyper Scape is being shut down by Ubisoft.
Ubisoft has announced that only 18 months after the launch of their free-to-play, FPS battle-royale Hyper Scape, they will be pulling the plug and the servers will officially shut down in April.
In the announcement, Ubisoft said:
“We have made the difficult decision to end development of Hyper Scape and shut the game down as of April 28th. 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. We will be taking key learnings from this game into future products.”
The game got off to a good start when the beta launched back in July of 2020, but the response from players and critics alike was mixed which is probably the cause of the disappointing player figures. It seems the game didn’t stack up when competing against the likes of PUBG and Fortnite in the Battle Royale arena.
Since its release, Hyper Scape hasn’t really had any major updates besides the launch of season three in March last year and patch notes 3.1 being released in April of 2021 after which there has been radio silence on the game’s official Twitter account.
Gamesradar’s official review on Hyper Scape noted:
“Spending three hours with the upcoming tech test build, I’m not yet convinced its gunplay is either as robust or satisfying as its peers, but there’s certainly fun to be had in experimenting with its table-turning hacks, off-kilter weaponry, and freeform mobility.”
The game is notable for its connection with live video game streaming, allowing Twitch spectators to influence the outcome of a match. Hyper Scape’s main mode is similar to other battle royale games in that it drops up to 100 people onto a battlefield that shrinks over time as players try to remove the competition.
One major distinction between Hyper Scape and other popular battle royale games is that, rather than a circle shrinking as the game proceeds, random portions of the map vanish.
Players can also find both weapons and special abilities known as “Hacks” throughout the game, such as the ability to transform into a giant ball from which they can bounce around or the ability to become invisible. At any given time, a player can only have two weapons and hacks available, though each item can be swapped out during a round.
If you are one of those that are a fan of the game you will have 90 days to play and wrap up your affairs so to speak whereafter all servers will be shut down and the game delisted.
The game was given mediocre reviews by major gaming news outlets for eg: Metacritic gave it a 68%, whereas Eurogamer gave it a 3/5 and IGN gave Hyper Scape a measly 5/10.
What are your thoughts on the news of Hyper Scape’s demise? Are you a fan and if not let us know why in the comments?