Near the beginning of February, Krafton gave an early-access release to PUBG: Blindspot, a spin-off from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. However, Blindspot won’t make it to its two-month anniversary as the game is scheduled to shut down in just a few days.
ARC Team’s Sequoia Yang shared an announcement that PUBG: Blindspot will cease operations on March 30. “After careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that we are no longer able to sustainably provide the level of experience we set out to deliver through Early Access,” wrote Yang.
Yang went on to thank players for their support and added that, “The ARC Team will take some time to regroup, and we hope to return with new experiences in the future.”
Blindspot was a free-to-play title, but it failed to attract a large enough audience to sustain the game. It was a 5v5 top-down tactical shooter that emphasized teamwork. The reviews on Steam were generally favorable, although many of them mention that the game badly needed players to make more matches.
There a number of live-service shooters dominating that space now, including Helldivers 2 and Arc Raiders. Even the much-hyped Marathon has only been able to pass just over 1.2 million copies, with most of its sales coming from Steam. That’s far from a flop, but also below expectations for a game that Sony and Bungie have sunk a lot of money into.
ARC Team isn’t owned by Krafton, so it’s fate may not be sealed by Blindspot’s demise. At the same time, Krafton was recently hit with a legal judgment in favor of the Subnautica 2 producers who were forced out of their company, Unknown Studios, last summer. CEO Robert Gill was reinstated to his former role by the court, but a new battle between the two sides is brewing over Subnautica 2’s early-access release.