Gearbox’s take on the MOBA genre, Battleborn, wasn’t that successful. The game was unfortunately dwarfed by the rampaging success of Activision/Blizzard’s Overwatch. As revealed back in 2019, the result of this commercial failure is that the servers are being taken offline on January 25, meaning you have just under three weeks left to make the most of the game before it disappears forever.
The closure of the servers doesn’t just affect the multiplayer modes. Because the game used a persistent online connection regardless of what players were doing, the loss of the servers means players won’t be able to access the single player or peer-to-peer parts of the game either. It’s not just players who’ll miss the game though; ex-Gearbox developer Aaron Linde has explained he’s “heartbroken” by the fact the game will just disappear. In a series of tweets, he said:
Battleborn’s servers are going dark in just a few weeks. When they do, it’ll be like the game never existed at all. All the work and love and blood that went into that game will disappear with it and I’m really heartbroken about it.
I’m grateful for every person that ever told me that the game meant something to them. For every line I had repeated back to me. I hope something of it lives on in your memories like it will in mine (and in the pile of VO that I keep backed up in three different places)
I listen back to my archives with some frequency and it’s like getting to hang out with my friends again — @JimForonda, @AboutElizabethM, @JustChrisSabat, and so many others. Recording that game was and will remain the most fun I’ve ever had doing anything. Every day was a joy.
And building such a weird, wild, bizarre universe with @jythri and all of my wonderful colleagues at Gearbox was just about the best experience I could’ve asked for creating a new IP. I miss and love you all. I’m swearing a blood oath to myself now that, one day, god damn it, I’ll make something as weird, and personal, and idiosyncratic as Battleborn again.
And I’ll chain myself to something and go on hunger strike to make sure the fucking thing is playable on disc so I can actually have something that my kids can play.
The game’s final update was released back in 2017. Development at Gearbox then moved on to a “highly anticipated unannounced project,” which turned out to be Borderlands 3. Battleborn has been going through a gradual shutdown process since the start of last year. Players could no longer purchase Platinum, the game’s virtual currency, from February 2020, although they could still earn it in game and spend it. That currency can be used up until the game’s server closure on January 25, at which point Battleborn will be no more.
[Source: Aaron Linde on Twitter]
