Evolve, a pathetic end for a pathetic game

The end is nigh for Evolve

Dedicated servers shut down in September, Stage 2 to be removed from sale

Remember Evolve? Turtle Rock's ambitious 4v1 monster shooter is coming to the end of its life, with Evolve publisher and intellectual property owner 2K signalling a raft of key features will soon no longer be available.

In a post on the 2K website, the company announced Evolve's dedicated servers shut down on 3rd September 2018. This means features such as Hunt (Ranked), leaderboards and the in-game store won't be available. On 2nd July 2018, Stage 2, the free-to-download version of the game, will no longer be available on PC.

However, you'll still be able to play Evolve online via the peer-to-peer multiplayer in Legacy Evolve on PC and console. All players retain the DLC they bought, too.

Peer-to-peer multiplayer lets you team up and play against each other through peer-to-peer matchmaking, as you'd expect. You can also party-up to create games.

It's no surprise to hear 2K announce a plan to shut down Evolve's dedicated servers, given there can't be much of a playerbase for the game at this point (Evolve is currently not in Steam's top 100 games by concurrent users).

Back in 2016, developer Turtle Rock announced it would no longer work on Evolve, which launched amid a "DLC s***storm" that "washed away people's enthusiasm" for the game. Evolve then saw a mini-resurrection as a free-to-play game.

It's crazy how many online-only games have just bit the dust this gen. The complete mess.

Interesting that smaller budget PC games with basically, no press coverage have been fruitful.

Insurgency has sold 3.76 million copies.

That's quite a lot, yeah.

Good riddance, game sucked.

I played the free to play version, it was fun.

Not "I'll pay you 60 bucks and two season passes on top of that"-fun, but fun.

It was a MTX flagship, that we sunk.

This is a non event, really... They are merely closing a server that nobody used.

Now give us L4D3.

I found the game good and got some fun with it. But of course, like all games, I got cheated to death.

So the only problems I got with this game is the cheating.

I doubt the game have fail more than other mp games around. I mean, I think it's almost all mp games beside BF and COD that loose its players quickly,

I thought this game had completely died off over a year ago.

It was a good game but It didn't offer enough variety or replay value to keep people. It was a good concept and if they had more MP modes even standard ones like DM,CTF etc it could of stayed. And like most MP there's only a handful that successfully keep people

Yep, the concept of online gaming is fine but in practice they almost always get destroyed by griefers, cheaters and no-lifers.

Never played it for a second... Too bad, it looked neat, but not my cup of tea.

I totally forgot Evolve existed until I saw the title's name.

I remember that game. What a waste of money.

Never even played it.

I remember reading rave reviews in many local gaming mags when Evolve launched. According to the reviewers the game was innovative and darn good fun.

So why did it fail?

Never played it but I saw some streamers and youtubers and it genuinely looked fun.

Game should have been an early access game though and sold as such. They didnt have enough content because they sold it as a fully priced game with the idea of further milking the playerbase with constant DLCs, cosmetics, player/monster packs etc etc.

Lol "people want mp games"

Lol "SP games don't matter"

Could have been so much more... Glad I didn't buy it, though. It was 'try-it-at-a-friends-for-an-hour' tier.

Expected ....

I got it along with all the dlc for free on the Xbox One sometime ago. I played it for a bit. It’s a pretty fun game however the way they chopped this game up really hurt it.

The "darn good fun" could be had in like 1 out of 20 matches. The game mostly didn't work as the developers intended and ended up in people just running around. And just running isn't fun. I guess it received good reviews since most reviewers don't really give a shit and just wants to be one of the first websites to have a review for clicks. I bet they played a few matches when the game was new, found it fun and wrote a hasty review instead of going in debt about how the game really is and will be after playing for a while.

That, coupled with the seriously stupid business model they had, I guess was the reason it failed. If you ask me, the game and its' developer got exactly what they deserved.

I don't care what the game is, I find it unacceptable that they shut down the servers. What does it really cost a publisher to run a server... **** all.

People claim because it's not popular is not worth running, in that case if nobody is on it then it costs them nothing, they can just run the server software on the machine that hosts another game in that case.

Or have a dedicated server for all the 'dead' games.

It was a pretty fun game though.

But wasn't Evolve a AAA title? i thought those were supposed to be much better?

2K has turned into complete trash this gen. This game, the WWE games, Mafia 3.

They have overtaken Ubisoft for me in the worst developer prize.

A game with a Singleplayer mode as well as a Multiplayer mode can never truly die.

Learn your lesson developers.

I'm surprised we're even talking about this game again. This thing was a microtransaction black hole of chaos that could have had potential, but dropped the ball. Hell, I think the jankier Friday the 13th game executed the idea way better. Anyway, good riddance. Maybe now Turtle Rock can be put to use by Valve on L4D3 since their schedule seems to be opening up soon.

I remember IGN shamelessly giving this game a 9. They can barely disguise when they get sweet advertising dosh from companies.

Cannot be emphasized enough.

Devs: you aren't going to release the next Fortnite just because your idea sounds cool. Sticking to traditional multiplayer experiences -- ones that complement and/or supplement singleplayer experiences are much safer.

Game was completely awful nothing of value was lost.

@TheEroica: The 4 vs 1 thing never caught hold. I played fable legends version it was fun for tad in that alpha but we all knew it wasn't going to be a thing. So i didn't even bother with Evolve. As someone else has said this is not even news worthy as it's the shut down of a server not many are using anyway.

Ever heard about a game called Friday the 13th or Dead by Daylight to name a few.

Similar idea and when done right it can become successful

But darn I have completely forgotten Evolve ever existed, no surprise that they shut that down, it was a complete and utter failure.

Good riddance.

Asymmetrical online games are tricky, there seems yet to be one that gives people a reason why to choose it over a traditional multiplayer game. Still, it's a novel idea that, imo, is still surprisingly fresh despite being well over a decade old at this point.

With that said, Evolve did seem like a pretty solid game, just not good enough for that initial price point. I remember looking at some online gameplay videos and it looked mediocre, and when I tried it for a free weekend my experience confirmed that.

Still, it'd be nice to see the sub-genre do something really well. Maybe a Godzilla vs. Army, 50-versus-1 game :P

Yeah, a "boneyard" server for older games would be cool. Minimal support, limited capacity...but hey, still there.

However, the game only requires five people per match, and I imagine anyone still playing it was part of some sort of community; peer-to-peer will be sufficient.

There were some other asymmetrical/one-versus-many games out there as well. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's online had a pretty good cat and mouse mode iirc, where you had the infiltrator with gadgets, and the overpowered security guy. That was fun but, again, pretty niche and not that huge (besides, Splinter Cell is a singleplayer game at its core).

Hmmm never mind, can't really think of any others lol. It's definitely a sub-genre that could use some more effort put into it.

I was under the impression Dead by Daylight and Friday the 13th were also mediocre games.

Of course, there's the ultimate asymmetrical game: Dungeons and Dragons! 4 heroes vs 1 evil DM!!!

This is disgusting what if people paid 60 dollars for this game now they can't play it?

God that game sucked lol

The game looked fun. I just didn't buy it because of all of the microtransactions, and I didn't buy it later when they attempted to make it more reasonable because it didn't look like anyone was playing the game.

Their business practice might have been pathetic, but I thought the game itself was solid overall. Good thing you can still play p2p, although I doubt I will have time to dive back in.....I already played it quite a bit.

@thereal25: Yes, and those are just a few of the issues with modern online multiplayer gaming. The entire online MP experience has completely devolved and isn't worth touching anymore.