The Battleborn

blog post , marking the end of Gearbox’s hero shooter, which released back in mid-2016.

2K also announced that it has removed Battleborn from digital storefronts, and has begun reallocating resources towards other projects.

2K confirmed that players who already own the game won’t be impacted until that 2021 date, but premium virtual currency will be disabled for all players after February 24, 2020. No other features in Battleborn will be affected until the server shutdown.

Loading

Once Battleborn’s servers are shutdown in 2021, 2K says the game will be unplayable, including the single-player campaign and PvP games.

2K also confirmed that any players who still have Battleborn’s in-game virtual currency will still be able to spend it until servers shut down. Players will still be able to earn currency by grinding for it through gameplay.

Battleborn, which infused elements of the hero shooter genre (think Overwatch or Apex Legends) with elements of the MOBA genre (League of Legends, DOTA 2), was, unfortunately, a victim of poor critical reception, and released only a few short weeks before Blizzard’s Overwatch launched to uproarious praise. In mid-2017, Gearbox announced a free-to-play version of Battleborn, which allowed players to access all competitive multiplayer modes.

Loading

On a 2017 episode of IGN Unfiltered, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford said he wasn’t sure Overwatch impacted Battleborn’s sales, but did admit that it probably impacted the game’s lasting legacy.

"Let's imagine Overwatch didn't exist at all; I don't know that anything would have been different. Maybe Battleborn would have had the same exact audience it had, it just wouldn't have been compared," Pitchford said.

“They're actually different things,” Pitchford said, referring to Battleborn and Overwatch. "[They might have had the same results. I'm telling you this, if Overwatch did not exist and it had exactly the same results, a lot of people would have seen, 'Oh, that was a winner, that's a new IP and it's successful, and holy crap where did this come from?' It would have been seen in a totally different light, even if it sold not a single unit more than it did," he explained.

Pitchford explained later on that Battleborn was tracking to sell “just ahead” of Gearbox’s Borderlands, although no official numbers were released.

Loading

"We reached three to four million people and it's like, 'oh you guys f—ked up so bad. Such a failure. And it's only because of the [Overwatch] comparison, I think," Pitchford said.

Battleborn writer Aaron Linde, who now works for 343 Industries, shared a number of tweets mid-Monday that expressed his frustration with Battleborn being shut down for good.

"I f****** hate this," Linde wrote. "I know it's no small feat to patch the game to be playable offline, but the idea that the game will just evaporate is something I've been dreading for years, and now has a hard date. That's three years of my life. Not just that, Battleborn is probably the most personal game I'll ever make. I poured everything I had into those characters. I burned out, and hard, making that game. And soon it'll just be gone, like it never existed at all. I'm kinda heartbroken."

Linde added that Battleborn likely won't be able to live on in the form of YouTube videos, considering every mission plays out differently, especially with different characters. Linde said that one mission script consisted of 70 pages.

In our review, IGN gave Battleborn a 7.1 out of 10 when it released in 2016. A strong cast of characters (like a fungal healer or a steampunk sniper) and a fun leveling system kept things mildly interesting. Despite those positives, a lackluster, repetitive campaign, a lack of interesting stages, and a lack of meaningful multiplayer modes kept things from competing with Overwatch and other titles.

A physical copy of Battleborn can still be purchased on sites like Amazon for somewhere between $6 and $8

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN. Battle him on Twitter.