Another free-to-play game is coming to an end as Knockout City on Nintendo Switch and other platforms will be closes its doors in June. Published by EA and developed by Velan Studio, the team behind Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, the game reveals that the game will shut down after Season 9 on June 6. The team says that closing Knockout City was a difficult decision and they are very happy with what they did. Velan Studios said in a statement about Knockout City’s closure that they promise “you will continue to see new and innovative games from Velan Studios that will surprise and delight gamers around the world.” The news follows the closure of another free-to-play game, Rumbleverse from Iron Galaxy, which will close its doors on February 28.
“This was an extremely difficult decision for us, but a necessary and important one for our studio. Before that happens, there are a ton of new updates in store. We’ve got a jam-packed Season 9 full of the amazing new content you’ve been waiting for, an epic send-off in and out of the game, and even a private server version on PC so Knockout City can live on forever. “
“Creating such a different game without comparison and launching live services for the first time in many of our careers has also made the past few years particularly challenging. Despite over 12 million players and billions of KOs worldwide, there are several aspects of the game that need to be seriously disrupted in order to better attract and retain enough players to keep it viable. Being a small, indie studio, it’s simply impossible for us to make such systemic changes to a live game while continuing to support it. So it became clear to us that we had to take a step back and pave the way for Velan to do what we do best by innovating.”
Personally, the announcement of the end of Knockout City is a bittersweet moment for me. While this is the end of a two-year journey for some of you, myself and a few others on the team have been living in Knockout City for over six years. It’s me soproud of the team at Velan for creating such a wild new game with such critical acclaim at launch, for creating a brand new engine from scratch capable of doing things no other engine can do over the internet, for creating what I think for having some of the most creative (and funniest) cosmetics of any live-ops game on the market, and for keeping the game running, developing, and improving for two years straight. I am also very grateful to everyone yourplayers, for being the most positively supportive gaming community any of us have ever seen, for devoting your time to chatting with us on Discord, Twitch and elsewhere, for teaching me new tricks in my game every time you beat me, I fell in a match, and for putting up with me while I laid a little too much on that Taunt button!”
