PUBG: Blindspot, a spin-off of the popular battle royale game played from a top-down perspective, will shut down less than two months after entering early access on Steam. If you want to give the game a shot, this weekend is your last chance to do so.
Early access ends and PUBG: Blindspot disappears from Steam at 5 a.m. EDT on Monday, March 30. The game will have been available for just 53 days in early access. That is only slightly longer than Highguard, this year’s most infamous live service flop, lasted.
A message on Steam credited to developer Sequoia Yang outlines that while ARC Team was “exploring multiple ways to improve the experience and move the game forward,” it ultimately determined that it could not “sustainably provide the level of experience we set out to deliver through early access.” ARC Team will remain together for the time being, with Yang saying their work on PUBG: Blindspot will “inform our future development efforts.”
Krafton and PUBG Corporation’s ARC Team released PUBG: Blindspot on Feb. 5. Rather than being an expansive battle royale game, it was a much more intimate top-down tactical shooter reminiscent of Rainbow Six Siege. Two teams of five face off in levels with fairly destructible environments, with one attempting to plant and activate a bomb and the other trying to wipe out the enemy team before that happens.
It never managed to connect with a large player base, though. Looking at SteamDB, PUBG: Blindspot only ever hit an all-time concurrent player count high of 3,251 around launch and has steadily seen those numbers drop since then. At the time of writing, its 24-hour peak player count is just 184, which is not good considering it’s only available on Steam right now.
I played the game around launch and came away disappointed. PUBG: Blindspot felt sluggish compared to other top-down shooters and tactical shooters, so I was bored more often than not while playing the game. Its art direction and character design also weren’t particularly memorable, while its connection to PUBG didn’t materialize in meaningful ways. I dropped the game after only playing it for a day or two.
In the multiplayer shooter space, new games really need to stand out and be a lot of fun to play to be successful. PUBG: Blindspot did not achieve that and will shut down as a result. If you want to give the game a shot before it goes away forever, it’s free to download on Steam this weekend and will be playable until 5 a.m. EDT on March 30.