The Culling 2 Removed from Store Shelves, The Culling Going F2P

There’s no denying the rocky launch The Culling 2 has had. After its July 10, 2018 release date, Xaviant’s battle royale game was met with a wave of negative reviews and staunch criticism. A cursory glance at critic circles and you’ll find a plethora of complaints about the game: Jim Sterling of The Jimquisition called the game a “desperate attempt to ape PUBG” and Steven Petite of IGN said, “The Culling 2 is nothing more than a weak imitation of PUBG and H1Z1.” After listening to public feedback, Xaviant has an answer: pulling The Culling 2 from store shelves.

The director of operations at Xaviant, Josh Van Veld, published a YouTube video to give “an update about [the] studio and our projects.” In the video, he admits that the launch of The Culling 2 was “not successful,” citing that it was “not a game that you asked for and it’s not the game you expect as a worthy successor to The Culling.” According to Van Veld and his team at Xaviant, “the best course of action is to take that game down off of store shelves.” This week, Xaviant will be in talks with digital distributors Microsoft, Sony, and Valve to “close those stores and to make sure that those of you who bought the game get refunds,” so expect to see the game removed from your library and a refund appear in your bank account in the coming days.

Though The Culling 2 will be removed from store shelves – Van Veld didn’t specify whether the game will still be sold physically in retail stores – Xaviant is committed to its fan base and intends to go back to the original The Culling (or “The Culling Day 1,” as Van Veld puts it, “literally the build that we launched back in March of 2016”). What this means is The Culling Day 1 will return to active test servers on PC. In addition to this, The Culling (the latest build from October 2017) will go back into development and will operate as the studio’s platform going forward. Van Veld also announced that when The Culling returns, it’ll go free-to-play. So you won’t be able to play the sequel, but at least you’ll be able to return to the original. And for those that missed both, with The Culling going free-to-play when it relaunches, it’ll be the perfect opportunity to check it out.

Will you be replaying the original The Culling?