Free-to-play PC shooter Dirty Bomb developer Splash Damage announced Thursday that it will discontinue all work on live development of the game. The developer apologized for its “radio silence” regarding the game’s future and revealed that its decision came after “a challenging couple of months full of sensitive decisions,” that led the team to this conclusion.
“It’s with a heavy heart that, after a bug fix build ships in the upcoming weeks, we will be ending live development and updates on Dirty Bomb,” said the studio. The news comes less than two months after the studio launched the official 1.0 build of the game.
Despite regaining the game’s publishing rights from Nexon America in 2017 and significantly building up its development team to support the game, Splash Damage was never able to build Dirty Bomb into a financial success. While the game peaked at just under 13,000 concurrent players, Dirty Bomb’s average monthly player count has dropped by almost 75 percent in the last year. The game is currently averaging 657 concurrent players over the last 30 days.
The dwindling playerbase meant less opportunities for microtransaction and DLC purchases, hurting Splash Damage’s bottom line and leading it to shutter the game’s development.
“Unfortunately, despite all the added time and resources, there were some challenges we couldn’t overcome, and we were not able to make [Dirty Bomb] the success that we hoped it could be. The bottom line is that we can’t financially justify continuing to work on the game we love,” said Splash Damage.
In a somber blog post to its fans, the studio said it will refund all players that purchased the game’s All Merc Pack DLC by January 31, 2019 and allow them to retain any unlocked mercenaries. Servers for the game will remain active as long as player counts justify doing so and players will still have the option to rent servers.
Splash Damage might have other projects in the works, but the demise of Dirty Bomb stands as a punch in the gut for the developer. Nevertheless, the studio remained thankful to those who showed them support throughout the game’s lifespan.
“To close, we’d like to say a heartfelt and sincere thank you for your support these many years. Dirty Bomb is a shooter that we always wanted to make, we could not have done it without you and are forever grateful.”
