VU Games discontinues Tribes support

In a terse note on the Tribes: Vengeance message board, which was posted last week, a representative from VU's marketing department stated: "Development on the previously announced Tribes: Vengeance 1.1 update has been cancelled. No further updates to Tribes: Vengeance are planned."

Irrational's sci-fi shooter for the PC hadn't seen a proper patch since its release in October, causing its fans to become restless. The post was met with the protests of upset gamers desperate for an update, many of whom felt betrayed by the decision.

One gamer, who goes by the handle of "Notman," directed disgust at VUG on the same message board: "From what I see, people were waiting for the game to move past beta level. So yes, I'm mad. There is no game to move to that will offer what the Tribes series offers. I'm going to play Tribes 2 for what little time it has left. Since you won't fix the update server issue, that you broke, no new people will be joining it. So eventually it will just die."

Earlier, a VU Games marketing representative had posted on the community board that the patch was "in progress/test" and would fix basic map bugs and include PunkBuster support. That post did not give an estimated time of release.

As for reasons behind VUG's decision to cease work on the update, VUG is stating little, although the game's sales record may have been an influencing factor. The title has performed modestly at retail. According to NPD, Vengence has sold just over 43,000 units through February (which, by comparison, is less than 10 percent of what VUG's Half-Life 2 has sold in about the same time).

The game's history may have also contributed to the decision: the title shipped requiring gamers to download a patch to play over the Internet. In VUG's words (in the patch's "read me" file), the 1.01 patch was "required for online play."

Though the game has a devoted following, this recent news does not bode well for the Tribes franchise.