Free-to-Play Knockout City Shuts Down for Good This June
/
Developer Velan Studios announced that after two years of supporting the team-based free-to-play online game Knockout City, they will now be ending its service as servers will shut down for good on June 9. Not all is lost as a Private Hosted Server Edition of the game will be available free to download for PC players in the coming months.
Here’s the special announcement from the developers:
“Today we are announcing that Season 9 will be Knockout City’s final season. Then, on the morning of June 6, 2023, over two years after our initial launch, all servers around the world will be shut down and the game will no longer be playable. This was an extremely difficult decision for us, but a necessary and important one for our studio. Before that happens, there are a ton of new updates in store.
We’ve got a jam-packed Season 9 full of all the amazing new content you’ve come to expect, an epic send-off both in and out of the game, and even a private server version on PC so Knockout City can live on forever. Read on for a full explanation of why we’re making this decision, what it means for you, how it affects the game, and everything you can look forward to over the next few months.”
The ability to purchase games will be removed from Knockout City starting February 28
February 28 is also the start of Season 9, its final season which will run for 12 weeks with six back-to-back events, an exclusive event for League Play, and a two-week Midnight Madness where the community gets to pick two playlists they want to play before they close the final season.
It’s sad to see Knockout City go as it did provide a solid competitive game surrounding dodgeball, but like other free-to-play titles, they couldn’t maintain a good player base to justify further support for the rest of 2023 and beyond.
Not all is lost as we are getting a Private Hosted Server Edition, so players from the game’s community can still gather and play a few rounds on their own. More details on this version of the game will be provided in the future.
It’s easy to describe Animal Well as a puzzle-focused Metroidvania eschewing traditional combat, where nearly every room is a puzzle room, but that falls so far short of describing just what this game is and how expertly it defies genre and classification that it feels like a disservice. Animal Well is a paragon of the art form, a game that simply must be experienced.