Velan Studio’s Knockout City to shut down in June

Velan Studios announced that it is shutting down dodgeball battle royale Knockout City. The game’s servers will go offline on June 6, after which it will no longer be playable. Its current season, Season 9, ends on May 23. The game’s final two weeks will feature a farewell celebration. According to Velan, Knockout City may live on a private PC server at some point in the future.

Jeremy Russo, the game’s director, said in the announcement post, “A ton of love, passion, and hard work has gone into Knockout City, and our amazingly positive and dedicated community of players has made it well worth the effort. We love you all, and we would keep doing this forever with you if we could!… Despite over 12 million players and billions of KOs around the globe, there are several aspects of the game in need of major disruption to better attract and retain enough players to be sustainable. Since we are a small, indie studio, it’s simply impossible for us to make those kinds of systemic changes in the live game while continuing to support it.”

Russo added that Velan would use what it has learned to create more games in the same universe as Knockout City. In the meantime, the game’s final update will roll out on February 28. At the same time, Velan will disable all real-money transactions within the game. According to the FAQ, the private server version of the game will be available as a free download on PC sometime in the coming months.

Knockout City isn’t the only multiplayer title to announce a shutdown this week. Iron Galaxy also announced that it was sunsetting Rumbleverse, its brawler royale, after only six months after launch. Unlike Knockout City, Rumbleverse will not live on in a private server. As for Velan Studios, Russo says it’s in “various stages of development on a few other projects” and will shift over to development full-time after Knockout City shuts down.