New survival shooter was a great hope for the MMO genre – now it is dying before leaving early access

Scavengers is a shooter that offered a mix of PvE, sandbox, and classic survival shooter elements. It was released on May 1, 2021, in Early Access on Steam and Epic Games. In May 2022, it was announced that the game would be put into maintenance mode. It is now confirmed: it’s all over in December.

What is so special about the game? Scavengers was supposed to be the new flagship game for the technology “SpatialOS”. This technology was meant to revolutionize the MMO genre because it allowed the shooter to send 9,000 players into battle simultaneously. This could have enabled new world records.

SpatialOS was intended to generally allow small development teams to realize massive projects. In 2017, investors put a whopping $502 million into the technology. However, so far, the successes have not materialized. Scavengers was supposed to change that.

How did it go for the MMO Scavengers? Right from the launch of Early Access, the “Massive” aspect was abandoned. In the largest matches, only 60 players compete simultaneously in three different teams.

The basic principle is reminiscent of Fortnite or other battle royales, where the winning team is not the last survivor but the one that scores the most points. For these points, you could also complete many PvE challenges, including battling tough bosses.

You had pre-made characters available, from which you could choose one per match.

What will happen to Scavengers? On December 16, Scavengers will be shut down. The shooter could not win over a wide audience. At the launch of Early Access, only 16,000 people played at peak on Steam. In the last 24 hours, only 54 players were online at the same time on Steam.

This is why there wasn’t even a full release – the game is dying in Early Access.

What will happen to SpatialOS? Improbable, the company behind the wonder technology, has found a new focus away from traditional gaming.

They are now focusing on the “metaverse” as a new business field. Their project is supposed to be able to represent up to 10,000 players simultaneously to allow events or announcements to take place in a virtual world.

Everything that does not serve the metaverse is no longer the focus of the company, explains the CEO Herman Narula.

However, there is also criticism surrounding the metaverse, including from the Steam boss: Steam boss Newell says: Many who rave about the metaverse have probably never played an MMO.