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Amazon has been an integral part of the gaming universe since it acquired Twitch in 2014. It was also when Amazon Game Studios began working with Relentless Studios on a multiplayer shooter called Crucible. The game launched earlier this year, but Amazon brought it back into a closed beta a few weeks later. Now, Amazon is admitting defeat and canceling the game in its entirety.
Crucible was the latest in a long line of multiplayer first-person shooter games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, Destiny, and many more. Then you have similar but different “Battle Royale” shooters like PUBG and Fortnite. This is a crowded space, to put it mildly, but Amazon went ahead with Crucible anyway.
Unfortunately, early reviews of the game were mostly negative, citing boring combat, predictable enemies, and poorly balanced PvP. The interest of the players was also lacking. After several weeks, there were more people watching broadcasts of the original Everquest on Twitch than watching Crucible matches. The number of people who played Crucible, which was free to download, was in the dozens.
Amazon and the developer seemed to take all of this seriously, taking the game out of open access and returning it to closed beta status. He featured a list of changes he intended to make to the game, such as adding voice chat, cleaning up combat, and finding a way to deal with players turning AFK.
That was in July and news has been scant ever since. Based on the latest Crucible development update, the team has concluded that there is no “healthy and sustainable future ahead of Crucible.” The developers did not elaborate on the reasons for the shutdown, but things must be tough if they’re willing to waste six years of development on a game that will never be released. The sheer number of similar games with established player bases probably also helped convince Amazon Crucible that it had little chance of success.
While the game will never be released, dedicated gamers will have a chance to experience the mediocre shooter for a little longer. In the coming weeks, the developers will host a final playtest with the community. After that event, the Crucible team will disable matchmaking for online play. You can still create custom games until the servers go offline, which occurs at noon PST on November 9. Anyone who has spent money on in-game items will receive a refund; Amazon even has a support page to help with that.
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