Spellbreak brought a breath of fresh air to the shooter-heavy battle royale genre with a good dose of magic. But soon it will be over: The game will close the servers.
What kind of game is this? Spellbreak is a Battle Royale. So you fight for survival on an ever-shrinking map until only one person is left.
The special thing about the game: Here you don’t have guns or typical firearms at hand like in Fortnite or Warzone, but real magic.
In Spellbreak you collect items such as runes, boots or belts as well as powerful magic gloves that provide you with different abilities.
The magic gloves give you elemental magic like fire, rock, lightning, ice, wind or poison. You could have two of them with you and combine them freely.
This creates crazy abilities. In Spellbreak, your magicians can, for example, fly, summon storms, hurl burning rocks or create walls of ice. There are hardly any limits to the imagination.
Overall, the whole thing was almost a bit reminiscent of Avatar – The Last Airbender. With this approach, it was able to captivate even players who otherwise don’t care for battle royale.
Here’s how the game arrived: Spellbreak is playable on PC, but also PS4, Xbox One and Switch, even with crossplay. If you look on Steam, you can also see that the ratings are strong to date: 85% of reviews on Steam are positive. Above all, the praise for the unusual, unique gameplay stands out here.
However, the problem that it can take a long time to get into a game session is a source of criticism. Because here lies the problem: the number of players has fallen sharply. Apparently so strong that Spellbreak is finally over.
2023 is over: “This is goodbye to Spellbreak”
As strong as the ratings on Steam are, the player numbers themselves are weak. Spellbreak was never able to build on the good start to the release – instead the numbers kept falling, as the SteamCharts graphic shows:
The game was apparently unable to recover from this crash, because in an official statement the developers have now announced that the servers will be closed for early 2023. This leaves Spellbreak only about half a year – then it will be buried.
The development team commented on the decision to take this step after four years: “Our vision was to create a fresh multiplayer action-magic game with exceptional movement options and class customization that gives players the opportunity to express their inner to unleash battle mages,” the statement said.
“Spellbreak has been an ambitious project that has seen our team push the boundaries of design and development, and we look forward to continuing to create new titles in the future.”
It sounds similar to Seth Sivak, the CEO of developer Proletariat Inc., who addressed the fans in the subreddit: “Unfortunately, the gaming industry is a difficult business. Spellbreak was unable to break through and achieve a sustainable place where we could continue to invest in the ways we dreamed of,” explains Sivak.
It’s been a tough road – and unfortunately Spellbreak never got off to the start it needed: “This is Spellbreak’s farewell, but I can’t thank this community enough for the support and help along the way. Spellbreak changed our studio and touched the lives of so many people. So once again: Thank you” (via reddit).
In the first reactions, some players mourn the game, but criticism is also expressed (via reddit). The game has become too quiet in the past few months, and there have been too few updates. After the initial hype, there simply wasn’t enough of the special game.
For comparison: The last update for Spellbreak was installed on September 1st, 2021. It’s unlikely that much will be added here before Spellbreak 2023 closes.
Unfortunately, Spellbreak is not the only game that dies. In the podcast, the MeinMMO team discussed several games that have already died – and which ones could come.