GungHo Entertainment’s struggling battle royale sequel to the 2016 original Let it Die is going back into development after mere months on the market. The free-to-play battle, melee-focused battle royale fully launched in October 2022, but will be suspending all services in July 2023 to address issues with the game.
Announced via Twitter and an official blog post, developer GungHo detailed its challenges with the game’s launch, specifically regarding matchmaking and lag. Despite its best efforts, the team stated it is unable to resolve the root cause of these issues and determined that the only solution that could bring the game up to its standards would be to take the entire game offline for redevelopment.
The message to their players reads in part, “This was a difficult decision for us to make. However, we believe that re-releasing the game with significant improvements will allow it to be enjoyed by a wider audience as well as our current players… Therefore, we believe this is the best possible decision at this time.”
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The current timeline given will see the end of all Death Metal (the in-game currency) sales on February 7, 2023, and a complete shutdown on July 18, 2023 at 7 PM PDT. The season 2 content that was already promised is still scheduled to release as intended, but also includes some content that was originally planned to be included for season 3.
Deathverse: Let it Die didn’t make much of a splash in terms of attracting a large population, despite the unique take of mixing a souls-like melee combat system with battle royale rules. The underlying issues with the game’s performance only diminished the playerbase further. While fixing these technical issues would be a great improvement for the small, but dedicated, fanbase, the relaunch will need to do more if it hopes to entice people to give this battle royale another shot.
