German developer Yager is shutting down its free-to-play shooter The Cycle: Frontier.
The studio revealed the news on the game’s Steam page, saying that the title would be closing down on September 27th. This is in part due to the number of cheaters that have plagued the Cycle, something that Yager struggled to handle.
“The general behavior with online games after a good launch is a couple of nice weeks, then a dwindling interest, until stabilization after a few months,” the studio wrote.
“During perhaps one of the most important periods of a live game, we faced many challenges. One of them and perhaps the most crucial one was the increasing number of cheaters shortly after TC:F went live. Although we had tools and measurements in place, we quickly realized we needed to improve our anti-cheat efforts to be able to ensure a fair game experience for all players. By the time we got additional partners onboard for our anti-cheat efforts and could focus again on gameplay and performance improvements for The Cycle: Frontier, many of you had already been affected and as a result we saw a significant decrease in our player base.
“Season 2 didn’t generate enough attention to kickstart the game again, therefore we’ve critically reviewed if the current state of The Cycle: Frontier was in line with our initial vision. In a word, it wasn’t, so we needed to correct our course. That’s why we announced the end of global mandatory wipes, along with the introduction of free loadout runs, loadout presets and changes to the early game experience, all in an effort to make the game more approachable. Just to be clear, this seemed to convince many players, and we saw an increase in our success metrics with the release of Season 3. Unfortunately it was still not enough to make The Cycle: Frontier financially viable.”
The Cycle launched in June 2022.
