NetEase-Backed Battle Royale Supervive To Shut Down After Player Numbers Approach Double Digits

As we know from PlayStation's high-profile disaster Concord, infinite resources are no guarantee of success in the live-service world. Cultivating a sizeable and dedicated player base is extremely difficult, and we've seen plenty of games that found initial success fail to sustain this popularity in subsequent years.

An example of this is Supervive, a top-down battle royale that developer Theocrycraft Games has just announced is shutting down early next year. Just thirteen months ago, Supervive peaked at 50,000 concurrent players. Now, the game is approaching double digits. Things can change quickly in the live-service world, and not necessarily because of any obvious missteps by the developer.

Ruthless Business

Theorycraft Games—which comprises former Riot and Blizzard employees—set out to create a battle royale that also appealed to MOBA and hero shooter players. Like many, I was impressed with Supervive when I played the beta, though, also like many, I didn't regularly play the game following its full release.

In a video about the closure, executive producer Jessica Nam highlighted poor player retention as one of the reasons why Supervive failed to maintain momentum following a successful beta and early launch period.

Supervive, Wukong, monkey character wearing a red jacket.

"From the beginning, we've always felt that there was something magical about the core combat of Supervive, and we've tried many different ways to bring that to the surface," Nam explains. "As time has gone on, it's become clear that our changes haven't been effective enough and bringing in new players has only gotten harder. Although we've seen a huge number of people download and try Supervive, most of them move on after their initial time with the game."

Supervive is an expensive endeavour, and Theorycraft can no longer afford to sustain the game as player numbers continue to drop. However, the failure of Supervive isn't the end of Theorycraft, as the studio is pivoting to new projects.

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"We're confident our next game is going to look pretty different from Supervive," Nam continues. "Our goal is to forge a new direction for Theorycraft, one aimed at delivering high-quality, sharply-focused games that live more squarely in the space between indie and triple-A."