The developers of Friday the 13th have announced that dedicated servers will be shut down with the next and final update. The game, which was quite successful in 2017, has been dying since a legal dispute in 2018.
What will happen to Friday the 13th? The official servers of the horror game will be shut down. In an official post in the forums, it is stated that it will be over with the next patch. This patch will also be the last one that Friday the 13th receives.
It is set to be released sometime in November. A specific date has not yet been revealed. Patch notes and more detailed information are expected to be available a week before the patch’s release.
The forums will also be closed at the same time. New posts will no longer be possible. Social media will be minimized.
What kind of game is it? Friday the 13th is an asymmetrical horror game for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, where up to 8 players can play in a lobby. A random player will become the famous killer Jason Voorhees and must kill the remaining players.
This makes Friday the 13th similar to Dead by Daylight, only with larger lobbies and just one killer. Recently, the game had an average of over 300 active players on Steam (via steamcharts). In the summer of 2017, over 16,000 players played simultaneously on PC alone.
Condemned to death since 2018
What happened in 2018? The shutdown of the servers and forums, and thus the end of support for the game, has been preceded by a long period of decline. This moment has been anticipated for 2 years. Only the exact “when” was still undecided.
Already in June 2018, there was a lawsuit between the creators of Friday the 13th and the author of the original work. As a result of this dispute, it was announced that there would be no further content updates for the game.
In September, the developers IllFonic announced that the studio intended to focus on other projects and would cease support for Friday the 13th.
This new project became Predator: Hunting Grounds, which, however, did not receive a good reception. The colleagues from GamePro rated Predator in the review with a mediocre 65 points.
What happens now? While the dedicated servers will be shut down, those who wish can still play Friday the 13th. The peer-to-peer connections for quick games and private multiplayer sessions will remain open, and progress will still be saved.
How long this will be the case and whether it will benefit the game is still uncertain. The asymmetrical PvP game Evolve went a similar route. There, the servers were also shut down first, and shortly after, the game died completely. Cortyn from MeinMMO was already sure at that time: Evolve is the game you all should miss.
