Steel Hunters, a free-to-play live service shooter developed and published by Wargaming, is being shut down just three months after release.
After releasing on Steam Early Access on April 2, the developer announced yesterday that it's officially ending support for the multiplayer mech combat game. "You've given us so much passion and support but unfortunately we've come to the conclusion that continuing development is not sustainable," reads the statement.
Servers will remain active for 90 days, until around October 8. The team is planning a myriad of activities, including the addition of custom game support, unlocking all characters for players, and a "Farewell Tournament."
"From the very first days of Alpha you've shaped Steel Hunters with your energy creativity and dedication and we're honored to have had you on this journey," the statement ends. "We couldn’t have wished for a better community and we’ll miss you all dearly."
On May 23, the developers announced attendance at Gamescom 2025, which would have entailed meet-ups with the team and news on "what's next" for Steel Hunters. Before yesterday's news, the team had released its second battlepass for season 1 of the game on June 9.
The average live service game's runtime keeps getting shorter
Steel Hunters is one of many examples of live service games having a short lifespan in recent times. After reportedly pouring $200 million into live service shooter Concord, Sony pulled the game from sale within weeks of release late last year, shuttering the studio behind it in the process. In January, Warner Bros. Games announced it would be shutting down free-to-play brawler Multiversus on May 30.
Other projects don't even get a release to the market. At the start of the year, Sony canceled two first-party live service titles in development at Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio, reportedly cutting contractors at the latter weeks after. This isn't new—back in December 2023, fellow Sony first-party studio Naughty Dog canceled a multiplayer spinoff based on The Last of Us' universe.
Despite all of this, some companies continue to chase the Games as a Service (GAAS) model. In an interview published last week, Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi said that game companies with "a good record tend to have a strong [global] GAAS business."
In regards to Sega, while the console and PC standalone business is "getting better," the publisher and developer is still working on making its GAAS business global. "That's one of the biggest challenges," he added.
Steel Hunters' shutdown, while unfortunate, may not be a big blow for developer Wargaming. The company still has World of Tanks and World of Warships (both over a decade old) driving revenue for the international company.
