Despite massive combat and fresh setting, Second Extinction was not the success we hoped for and will be removed from sale.
The big shooter death on Steam continues: This time it Second Extinction from developer Systemic Reaction.
After about three years in Early Access, the makers announce the end for the dino-shooter – and that even before the release of the final version, which will now never be.
Didn’t reach the hoped-for success
The company will discontinue development on Second Extinction after careful consideration, it says (in a statement): “Although Second Extinction was quite popular among gamers and the gaming community, it was not able to achieve the success we had hoped for. “
At its Early Access launch in 2020, the co-op shooter recorded around 2,000 simultaneous players, according to (SteamDB) but never approached that figure later.
Second Extinction is set in a kind of dino apocalypse, where players, as teams of three with high-tech weapons and special abilities, must reclaim the Earth’s surface from hordes of bloodthirsty lizards and complete missions on large and free-roaming maps to do so. Here’s what it looks like:
Server shutdown 2024
The massive gunplay, fluid animations, and chaotic Left 4 Dead-style horde gameplay initially won over some reviews, but ultimately Second Extinction never reached a wider audience.
The studio admits to having overreached itself with the project:
Unfortunately, it became clear that our small team couldn’t muster the resources to achieve the quality necessary for an Early Access ending, and it became a feat we weren’t able to accomplish.
Sales of the co-op shooter have already been halted, but the servers will continue to run for a while and will not go offline until later in 2024.
Extinction of the shooters?
The co-op shooter thus joins a long list of titles that have been laid to rest in recent months.
So the mecha shooter Gundam Evolution is facing extinction, the acclaimed time travel shooter Lemnis Gate went offline and also an Extraction shooter from Germany with once 40,000 users disappears forever.
What do you say about the demise of Second Extinction? Would you have liked to see a future for the dino-gabler, or is this even the first time you’ve heard of the game?
And are you concerned about the current development in the shooter genre as a whole? Feel free to write your thoughts on the current developments in the comments, we welcome feedback!
