The Cycle: Frontier, the free-to-play game by Yager, will see Season 3 to be its last, as the game will be “sunset” on September 27.
That means the game will end its live service with servers closing on that date.
Currently, no new players can download the client (unless you download it on Steam), and all monetisation has been disabled.
For those who are still playing, the premium version of Season 3’s Fortuna Pass is granted to everyone upon login, levels can still be skipped at a discount, and special offers in the in-game shop has a 95% discount.
The Cycle: Frontier began life as simply The Cycle, an ambitious PvPvE game. The game evolved into what it is today last year, and is an extraction shooter.
In the dev blog announcing the servers’ impending shutdown, the developers cited cheaters as one of its main problems.
“Although we had tools and measurements in place, we quickly realized we needed to improve our anti-cheat efforts to be able to ensure a fair game experience for all players,” the post reads. “By the time we got additional partners onboard for our anti-cheat efforts and could focus again on gameplay and performance improvements for The Cycle: Frontier, many of you had already been affected and as a result we saw a significant decrease in our player base.”
The Cycle: Frontier had some good momentum from big streamers playing the beta and eventual full release, but the arrival of cheaters really caused the playerbase to dwindle, and by the start of Season 3, the game was not financially viable.
Yager is most famous for the unexpected hit Spec Ops: The Line, and was at first helmed the development of Dead Island 2 before the reigns of that title was given later to Deep Silver Dambuster, which shipped the game this year. Unfortunately for this development team, their pivot to a multiplayer live service didn’t quite work out.
Ending the blog post, the team hinted that new projects are currently in the works, and will make use of all the “experience, learnings and feedback” from The Cycle: Frontier.
Source: The Cycle