Crucible, a humans-versus-alien-mercernaries “hero shooter” game, was intended to compete with Fortnite (which has 350 million players as of May 2020). Despite being free to play, and available on the industry-leading games platform Steam, Crucible’s first week at the end of May saw it amass just 5,000 players. By June, the company had pulled the game from digital stores, and put it back into beta development. Then, on Friday, Oct. 9, a brief blog post from the company announced that they would be “discontinuing development on Crucible.” They continued: “We very much appreciate the way that our fans have rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible.” The game, which was aiming for tens of millions of players, closed business with a fraction of that number. The game’s launch had also been hampered by its arrival amid the COVID-19 pandemic hit, as the developers freely admitted. “We’re launching the game entirely remotely. This is certainly a first for me, and we’ve had to adjust virtually everything about the way we work as a team to make this possible,” wrote project director Colin Johanson. For more gaming products going away, read on, and for another product shift in a very different industry, check out Nordstrom Just Became the First Retailer to Ban These Products. “Following an incredible 11 years since its initial launch back in 2009, we are officially announcing the closure of the original FarmVille game on Facebook,” the game’s developer Zynga wrote on the FarmVille Facebook Help page in early October. Adobe’s decision to stop updating Flash Player for all web browsers forced Facebook to stop supporting Flash games, like FarmVille, on the platform completely starting at the beginning of 2021. In September, Nintendo discontinued the handheld gaming console 3DS, GameBoy and Nintendo DS’s successor. “Nintendo and third-party games for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems will continue to be available in Nintendo eShop, on Nintendo.com and at retail,” the company said in a statement to CNN Business. And for more tech and games of yesteryear, here are 100 Photos That Kids Born After 2000 Will Never Understand. The Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus announced in September that its Oculus Quest is being discontinued as the brand shifted focus to the Oculus Quest 2, which was released on Oct. 13. According to Extreme Tech, “No new app or app updates will be accepted after Dec. 4, and the company won’t add new apps after Dec. 18, 2020.” And for more up-to-date info on tech, toys, and more, sign up for our daily newsletter.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb In July, Microsoft stopped making its Xbox One X and Xbox One S All-Digital Edition consoles. “As we ramp into the future with Xbox Series X, we’re taking the natural step of stopping production on Xbox One X and Xbox One S All-Digital Edition,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. The Xbox Series X is set to launch on Nov. 10. And for states where people love Xbox, check out The Most Popular Walmart Products in Your State.
