The Culling 2 is Being Deleted from Storefronts as Xaviant Returns to Work on the Original Game

Logan Moore July 18, 2018 12:04 PM EST

Following the abysmal launch of The Culling 2, Xaviant Games is abandoning the game entirely and is returning to the Day One version of the original The Culling.

After the catastrophic failure of launching The Culling 2 last week, the future of Xaviant Games seemed to be in question. The studio said that they would take some time to evaluate their situation before informing fans of their next steps.

Xaviant released an update video today informing fans of what those next steps would be and it involves some pretty drastic changes. For starters, Xaviant’s Director of Operations Josh Van Veld stated at the start of the video that The Culling 2 would be pulled from all digital storefronts across the game’s three platforms — PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Those that purchased The Culling 2 last week will be reimbursed for their purchases.

Van Veld says that Xaviant has realized over the past week that The Culling 2 was never a game that the community asked for and it didn’t live up to as a worthy successor to the original game. He goes on to says that the team at Xaviant was too eager to make changes to The Culling when it first launched in 2016 and didn’t take into account community feedback. Because of this, the team didn’t see a path forward with the game which is why they instead opted to create a full-fledged sequel, which he now acknowledges was a mistake

In light of this information, Xaviant has said that they will instead be turning their focus back to the original Day One version of The Culling and will continue to build around this game moving forward. Xaviant is essentially hitting the reset button entirely and will be making available the original version of The Culling that launched in March of 2016. This will begin rolling out on Xaviant’s test servers this week and will be absolutely free.

While players can now get back into this original version of The Culling, Van Veld says that Xaviant will begin to change the most recently updated build of the game from October 2017 to reflect what the game was when it first launched the year prior. Van Veld closes things by saying that he and the team at Xaviant have learned a great deal throughout this entire process and that they’re ready to apply those lessons into The Culling moving forward.

You can find the full update video from Xaviant at the bottom of this page. This is by far one of the craziest sagas that I have seen unfold in the industry within the past few years but it seems that Xaviant is now trying to listen to its fanbase and is doing what’s best for their company at this time. Hopefully, it all works out for them in the end.