Free-to-play shooter Scavengers will close down next month

After launching into early access in April last year, the free-to-play shooter Scavengers is closing down. Its servers will close on December 16th, with publishers Improbable pinning the cause on a “decline in the playerbase.”

“We have been quiet for a while now, and firstly we just want to apologize for that,” starts the post announcing the shut down. “We have an update for Scavengers but it is one that we share with a heavy heart. We have made the difficult decision to shut the game down on December 16, 2022. The last few months have seen a decline in the playerbase, and whilst we explored many options to reinvigorate server population while the game is in early access, it became clear that it was unsustainable to continue development and live service.”

They’re not kidding when they say they’ve been quiet for a while. The last update was back in March 2022, shortly before Scavengers developer Midwinter Entertainment was sold by Improbable to Dead By Daylight developers Behavior Interactive.

At the time, Improbable co-founder Herman Narula said that the sale was part of their “focus on the metaverse,” and “divestment of its non-metaverse focused content teams.” Improbable have spent several years trying to find a video game use for their server technology, SpatialOS, without much success. Ion, from Improbable and DayZ creator Dean Hall, was cancelled; 400-player battle royale Marvericks: Proving Grounds was cancelled; Bossa Studios’ Worlds Adrift closed in 2019; and Nightingale developers Inflexion were likewise sold by Improbable to Tencent. Perhaps Improbable will find more success with whatever the metaverse is.

Scavengers blended PvP and PvE combat together in a class- and squad-based battle royale. It has seen a decline in players on Steam in the past few months – from an average of 108 concurrent players in April to an average of 34 in October. At the time of writing it remains Available to download from the Epic Games Store but has been removed from Steam.