The original ‘The Culling’ launched in October 2017 following an early access phase. It was one of the early pre-PUBG battle royale games – pitting 16 players against one another in a melee focused arena full of loot.

The Culling 2 was teased only a few weeks ago, with the first gameplay trailer hitting July 9th announcing the game’s release date of July 10th – a quick turnaround.

The game launched yesterday afternoon on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, priced $20 / £16.99. Instead of building upon what made the first unique, developers Xaviant Games instead decided to pivot to what can only be described as a PUBG / H1Z1 clone. Dropping the melee focus and instead adding the usual guns, armour, helmets, backpack loot gameplay.

Fans of the original turned to social media, Twitch, and Steam to express their frustrations and disappointment. The game peaked at 249 players shortly after launching on Steam. 18 hours later, the game has 2 players.

Considering the game aims to pit 50 players against one another, these player numbers make the gameplay near impossible to experience properly. To put these numbers in perspective, there’s more folks playing Lawbreakers (a great game I might add, in my opinion!) right now, than The Culling 2.

This might end up being one of the biggest launch disasters in recent video game history. Fans were already unhappy with the way the dev team left the original – dropping support for the game whilst leaving the servers running at limited capacity only months after the official launch.

Their handling of The Culling 2 seems bafflingly naive. Not only removing what made the original unique but also charging $20 in a competitive climate. The resulting Steam reviews are currently sat at 127 negative reviews vs 20 positive.

It’s safe to say the studio will have to make a substantial pivot to be able to salvage the situation. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.