The Culling II hasn’t been out for a week, and it’s already dealing with a disappointingly low amount of players. It may be one of the most disastrous launches in recent history.
Back in October 2017, The Culling launched after some time in Early Access as a pre-PUBG battle royale game that pitted 16 players against each other in a melee-focused arena full of loot. The newest rendition of the series was teased a few weeks ago, released their first gameplay trailer July 9, and released the full game one day later at the price of $20. Instead of building on what made the first game original, the sequel changed its focus from melee combat to the gun-based style of PUBG/H1Z1/Fortnite. This shift has upset fans of the original, and many have gone onto social media to complain about Xaviant, the developers of The Culling, trying to cash in on the battle royale craze, and we’ve seen how that can turn out.
Combined with the release of Fortnite Season 5 and the reopening of a PUBG test server, The Culling II hasn’t so much launched as it fell off the launch pad and exploded. According to SteamCharts, The Culling II had 249 players playing when it launched July 10. Come July 11, and the game is struggling to break double digits. Given that the game supports up to 50 players in match, that is simply a depressing number of players. On launch day, Christopher Livingston from PC Gamer showed off a video where he won a round before he even got to open his parachute.
He points out that the only other player likely was AFK, but he says he’ll still wear that badge of victory with pride.
This could easily be one of the greatest launch disasters in history. It easily rivals the Japanese Wii game Sukeban Shachou Rena (roughly translates to Delinquent President Rena,) which sold a whopping 100 copies in its first week. Xaviant will really need to make some big moves in order to salvage this situation.
Update:
The official Xaviant Twitter has made the following post: