Second Extinction is a co-op shooter in which you fight against mutated dinosaurs that rule the world. The game thrilled with a great trailer in 2020, but it has struggled with problems since launching in Early Access. It is scheduled to finally be shut down in 2024.
What kind of game is this? In Second Extinction, people only live in space stations in space because the dinosaurs have taken control of the Earth. Players are sent out in guerrilla teams to retake the planet piece by piece.
At a first test event in September 2020, the shooter received a lot of praise. The chaotic fights and the cool dinosaurs particularly impressed the testers.
In October, the shooter was released on Steam in Early Access and on Xbox. Our colleagues from GameStar also tried out the title. Basically, they had fun, but were skeptical about the long-term motivation and the wealth of content.
And they were right.
Here you can first watch the trailer, which impressed many people:
Second Extinction – Reveal Trailer
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Little content and too monotonous
What did the first players say? While Second Extinction had around 78% positive reviews on Steam when it launched, that number has now fallen to 67%. The 170 reviews in the last 30 days are also only 10% positive.
At the start of Early Access, many players mainly complained that the story was far too short and the free exploration was too monotonous. You simply don’t have any tasks or goals to keep you occupied with the shooter for long.
The positive reviews primarily highlighted the potential that the title had in their eyes.
What happened next? Although there were always smaller updates in early access, there was no major content boost. The number of players developed correspondingly poorly.
While there were over 2,000 players online at the start, in August 2021 there were only 42 on average and 95 at the same time at the peak. The last major update followed in October 2021, which briefly pushed the number of players back over the 1,000 mark.
Since May 2023, the shooter’s player numbers have only been in the double-digit range. There were even short periods when no one was online.
This is of course a problem for a co-op game with such a special world feature.
The community took a big hit at the end of 2022. The official release was actually supposed to take place in October and early access was finally supposed to be over. But there was a postponement, first to November and then to 2023. But the release was never supposed to happen.
The last news about the game came in November 2022. Then there was radio silence until the discontinuation was announced a few days ago. The players were correspondingly angry, which explains the strongly negative reviews of the last 30 days.
The last blog post states that some critical errors prevented the release. With the small team and few resources there was no chance of completing the shooter. After a long exchange, the decision was made to discontinue Second Extinction.
When does the game die? The shooter has been removed from the official store and is no longer available for purchase. However, anyone who owns it can still access the active servers. The shutdown of this is scheduled to take place “later in 2024”. However, the developers want to announce it in good time.
What do you think of Second Extinction? Have you tried the shooter?
However, this shooter isn’t the only one that could get hit this year:
5 online shooters that could die in 2023