Here’s a top tip: don’t make a live-service game. It’s the surest route to not losing frightening amounts of money, followed by the indignity of taking a game offline just weeks after it launches. We’ve seen this happen to very high-profile games like Highguard and Concord, as well as highly promoted if smaller projects like King of Meat, while even super-successful games like Battlefield 6 still seem to result in swathes of layoffs. Next to fall, as reported by GameSpot, is extraction shooter The Cube, Save Us.
While certainly not a household name, there was reason for developers XLGAMES to have hope about The Cube, Save Us, released March 18: During last October’s Steam Next Fest, its demo was one of the ten most popular titles to appear in a field of thousands. This must have significantly boosted wishlists and given the impression that there was an audience out there for the post-apocalyptic Arc Raiders-like. But just three weeks later, it’s been announced that the free-to-play game is shutting down in a month.
Dead-Service
While it’s too early for an autopsy, two factors regarding The Cube, Save Us (beyond having nothing to do with the whole Cube franchise) really rather sounded its death knell: terrible reviews and no one playing. That’s not really a place a live-service game can come back from, even if you’re Sony, let alone the Korean team behind ArchAge. The game currently sits at nearly 70-percent negative reviews on Steam, and reached its peak of just 5,177 simultaneous players on launch day, then never coming close to matching that again. Player counts have petered out to the low hundreds at best after just three weeks, and this is all despite the game being free. It’s also very telling that the game has not received a single review from any recognized gaming sites, nor even a user rating on Metacritic. It just disappeared down a hole.
It’s horrible watching this happen to so many projects, where clearly years of dedication and work have been poured in to create something that almost no one ever plays. It’s even worse when the handful that do try a game let it be known how little they enjoyed it. However, Steam reviews have made it very clear that poor controls, lackluster combat, and far too much emphasis on those inevitable free-to-play cosmetic purchases have put off most who tried The Cube. In many senses this needed to compete with Arc Raiders, and it seems it doesn’t even get close. “Not even jiggly boobs can save this one,” says one reviewer.
Now XLGAMES has posted to the Steam store page to say the game is winding down. Rather awkwardly opening, “Survive the Wrath of the Cube!” the post then goes on to say that it’s all over. “Today, it is heartbreaking that we have to deliver unfortunate news to the Raiders. The Cube, Save Us…will have its end of the story on May 8, 2026.”
There are no further details regarding the causes, but the post does add that all purchases made “legitimately” via Steam will be automatically refunded starting on April 9.