Extraction shooter The Cycle: Frontier is shutting down because it's "not financially viable"
Cheaters have been a persistent problem
Free-to-play extraction shooter The Cycle: Frontier is shutting down servers and going offline on September 27th, developers Yager have announced. “Despite our best efforts and meaningful improvements brought to the game since launch,” they wrote in a Steam blog post, “the reality is that The Cycle: Frontier is unfortunately not financially viable,” leading to the game’s shutdown twelve months after launch.
In that same Steam blog, the team look back on the game’s successful launch and the problems that lead to its eventual sunset. After going semi-viral with big streamers, The Cycle had a pretty successful launch when “players started flocking en masse.” The problems started shortly after when an increasing number of cheaters targeted the shooter.
“By the time we got additional partners onboard for our anti-cheat efforts… many of you had already been affected and, as a result, we saw a significant decrease in our player base,” Yager said. Alas, even after a boatload of changes and improvements in Seasons 2 and 3, it wasn't enough to shock the dino-alien shooter back to life.
The Cycle: Frontier will remain playable until servers are disabled, and the team have issued updates to make the remaining months hassle-free. All microtransactions (Aurum packs and bundles) have been removed from the game, and every item in the in-game shop has been permanently discounted by 95%. On top of that, the latest battle pass is now completely free for everyone, and progression is faster than it’s ever been, meaning fans can enjoy The Cycle to its fullest before it goes away forever.
It's a shame, as those of us who did play it in the RPS Treehouse had a good time with it. Our Ollie said it “makes you really care about whether you live or die,” in his bonus game of the year picks at the end of 2022, "combining the intense competition of a battle royale with the 'oh god I have such good stuff on me, don't let me die here please' feeling that I've traditionally only ever got from the best survival games.”
You can download The Cycle: Frontier on Steam until servers shut down on September 27th. After that date, the developers will shift focus "to new projects using all the valuable experience, learnings, and feedback we’ve gathered".
