Developer Xaviant is shutting down The Culling 2 , hoping to give refunds to those who bought it. Xaviant is rebooting the original game as free-to-play as a result.

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In a video on Xaviant's official YouTube channel, director of operations Josh Van Veld issued an apology to fans of The Culling for the botched launch of The Culling 2 last week. The decision to pull the plug on The Culling 2 resulted from complaints over abandoning the original game, its decreased emphasis on melee combat, low server populations, and a generally poor reception."It's been difficult for us to wrap our heads around the entire situation," said Van Veld. "The Culling 2 was not a game that you asked for and it's not the game you expect as a worthy successor to The Culling."Xaviant is currently in the process of contacting Valve, Sony and Microsoft in efforts to remove The Culling 2 from their digital storefronts and is making sure those who bought the game receive refunds. To move forward, Xaviant is returning to the day-one build of The Culling, realizing that it changed "too much, too fast" about the original game.This day-one build will be coming to Xaviant's test servers this week, which will allow PC players to download The Culling in its day-one state, free of charge. Following this, Xaviant is putting The Culling back into development, with the day-one version remaining on its test servers throughout the ongoing development of the game.Xaviant's immediate goal is to take the most recent build of The Culling and remodel it after its day-one build, bringing back airdrops, perks, the original combat and more. To attract new and returning players, Xaviant is making The Culling free-to-play when it launches the updated build.The Culling 2's release date was announced one day prior to coming out on July 10. Before it was taken down, we said The Culling 2 is a stunning flop you should probably avoid In our review of The Culling 2, we called the game 'Painful,' saying "The Culling 2 is nothing more than a weak imitation of PUBG and H1Z1. With poor presentation that only gets worse during heated firefights, this battle royale is riddled with frustrating inconsistencies."

Colin Stevens is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter