Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodhunt’s development is ending a year following release

harkmob has announced that the development of its battle royale title Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodhunt is ending after just 12 months on the market.

The details:

• Sharkmob, the publisher and developer of the title, confirmed in a new blog post that further development of the free-to-play battle royale game would be halted as it failed to "reach the critical mass needed to sustain development" despite having an "amazing and very engaged community" throughout its lifecycle. The game’s servers will stay up, and the game will still be available for download for anyone to play as long as it has an "active player base and community." However, future patches will not feature content and will be strictly for maintenance reasons.
• The studio will also disable microtransactions in the game on September 26th but will add a way for players to earn in-game tokens to unlock the existing content easily. The developer also plans to include an "in-game player voting system" in a future update to "regularly unlock new things and keep Bloodhunt fresh." Details about the system will be revealed closer to the update's release, though it has not been specified when the update will be available.
• Bloodhunt was announced in 2021 and went through an early access period on Steam before becoming a free-to-play title on PC and PlayStation in April 2022. The game featured a more unique take on the battle royale genre, with vampires battling and traversing a nighttime Prague using parkour, powers, and, strangely, guns. Despite its attempt to reinvent a worn-out genre, it quickly became one of many games viewed as nothing more than a "cash-in" with no chance of surviving against heavy hitters like Fortnite, PUBG, and Call of Duty's Warzone.

Other game cancellations:

• Sony allegedly canceled a PlayStation 5 exclusive developed by Deviation Games with a budget of more than $50 million. When asked about the cancellation, a former developer said they were "really not sure, other than probably cost-cutting."
• Final Strike Games' sci-fi shooter, which had already been in development for three years, has reportedly been canceled by Sony. The game was described as a "new IP AAA PVP shooter" for the PlayStation 5 and PC, with no explanation for its cancellation.