Knockout City and Crossfire X are the latest live service titles confirmed to be shutting down
Another pair of games for the not-so-live-service pile.
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There's been a lot of news of live service games that are shutting down, with Knockout City and CrossfireX being the latest titles added to the pile.
Earlier this week, Velan Studios announced that its dodgeball brawler Knockout City would be wrapping up after Season 9, with global servers being shuttered June 6. Velan Studios announced the news in a blog post, writing, "This was an extremely difficult decision for us, but a necessary and important one for our studio… Despite over 12 million players and billions of KOs around the globe, there are several aspects of the game in need of major disruption to better attract and retain enough players to be sustainable. Since we are a small, indie studio, it’s simply impossible for us to make those kinds of systemic changes in the live game while continuing to support it."
The post goes on to explain that after coming to terms with all of this, it took a step back and will take everything it learned to work on "exploring new possible experiences for Knockout City and other games and products." Important to note is that as of February 28, all real-money transactions will be removed from the game, so you won't be able to buy Holobux, the deluxe bundle, or either of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bundles on any platform. But Season 9, dropping the same day, will have lots of XP, style chips, and "thousands of Holobux," to make up for it.
On PC, at the very least, a private server version of the game will be available, so it will still be possible to play in some shape or form, but only really if you have friends to play it with. The same can't be said for Smilegate's CrossfireX though, also announced to be shutting down later this year.
Smilegate also announced this week in its own blog post that CrossfireX will no longer be supported from May 18. All sales on the Xbox store have already been halted, and no more content is planned to be added to the game. If you've made a purchase 14 days prior to February 3, you might be able to get a refund, so that's worth checking if you have.
Control developer Remedy was also the team behind CrossfireX's campaign, which is also no longer going to be available to play from May. Quite the state of affairs for live service games, and paints a not particularly pretty picture for anyone that isn't Fortnite.