Velan Studios has announced that Knockout City will be coming to an end in just a few months.
In a season already stacked with cancellations, closures or soft endings of live-service and multiplayer games, the free-to-play online dodgeball game is seemingly the latest victim. The game will continue to run with its 9th and final season of content, before shutting down completely on June 6, 2023.
In a lengthy post making the announcement, Velan says the decision came about due to a particularly challenging couple of years running the game as a brand new, self-published (after taking over from EA Originals), free-to-play IP that it believes can’t be improved to be more sustainable without major systemic changes. Instead, the studio wants to take it as a kind of learning experience, collating all of its learnings from the game and putting them to practice in new projects (or a very narrow chance at the IP returning in future).
Starting on February with the kick-off of Season 9, real-money purchases will be removed from the game and the economy of rewards for the new season will shift to giving players enough rewards and discounts on in-game shopping that everyone should be rolling in content.
Interestingly, Velan also says it’ll be releasing a standalone, private server-enabled version of Knockout City for Windows PCs so that keen players can continue to host and play their own games long after the servers are switched off in June, which seems like a fantastic gesture in the face of what sounds like a bittersweet end to the game.
Knockout City is free-to-play and still available to download now on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch and PC.
