Gaming News

Knockout City Will Be Going Offline in June for Good.

After an explosive start, the popularity of the game has seen a constant decline for various reasons.

When the beta version of Knockout City was initially released back in April 2021, a few friends and I immediately hopped on the bandwagon since, at the time, it looked like an exciting new game.

But shortly after the full release of the game, many of my friends, including myself, felt kind of bored with the main gameplay characteristics and, over time, played it less and less.

Apparently, many other players have had the same experience since Velan Studios announced the termination of the game.

What is Knockout City?

First, let me briefly introduce this game for those unfamiliar with it. The knockout City was a trendy game. It is not a controversial game so seems to bore some gamers.

Knockout City has become a popular game because of its unique and enjoyable gameplay, vibrant art style, accessibility, and catchy soundtrack. It offers a fresh take on the multiplayer shooter genre. It also provides players with a unique experience that is fast-paced, strategic, and fun.

Knockout City is a competitive game of dodgeball. There is no story in the game. It is not a story-based game. The purpose is for online playing with other players in different locations.

It is a collaborative game allowing players to customize their characters, join crews, and create their teams by adding their online gaming friends.

Knockout City features multiple game modes, like standard matches and ball-up battles. They have their set of rules and objectives for players.

Knockout City is easy to pick up and play. However, it offers depth and a high skill ceiling for more experienced players. Therefore, as an experienced gamer, I enjoyed it very much initially but later got bored of it.

Knockout City is available on multiple platforms, such as the PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC, making it accessible to various gamers.

I read an article from Dr Mehmet Yildiz (a technologist and cognitive scientist), who assessed this initially popular game from stress management and cognitive development angles. Like me, he also enjoyed this game very much in 2021 and wrote this story.

Velan Studios’ Announcement

Velan Studios announced in a blog post that Knockout City would permanently shut down on June 6. The popular PvP dodgeball game will no longer be available, except for a PC-only private server version which will keep the game alive.

The post addressed to the community explains the reasons behind the difficult decision made by the development team. Here’s a portion of what was stated by the development team.

“Creating such a different game with no points of comparison and running live services for the first time in many of our careers has also made the past couple years particularly challenging. Despite over 12 million players and billions of KOs around the globe, there are several aspects of the game in need of major disruption to better attract and retain enough players to be sustainable. Since we are a small, indie studio, it’s simply impossible for us to make those kinds of systemic changes in the live game while continuing to support it.

So it became clear to us that we needed to take a step back and pave the way for Velan to do what we do best by innovating. Now we can take everything we learned, everything that succeeded and everything that needs improvement, and get to work on exploring new possible experiences for Knockout City and other games and products we are very excited about. We’re currently in the process of doing a comprehensive retrospective on every aspect of the game, all the community feedback and analytics data, and even our development processes.

Our hope is that sometime in the not-too-distant future, all this information can be used to start work on what comes next in the Knockout City universe. While we can’t promise that Knockout City will be back, what we can promise is that you’ll continue to see new and innovative games from Velan Studios that will surprise and delight players around the world.”

Velan Studios announced that the final season of Knockout City, Season 9, will commence on February 28. The 12-week season will include six consecutive events, each lasting for two weeks.

On the same day, all transactions using real money will be removed from the game. The economy in the final season will be greatly altered as a gift to players, including a Premium Brawl Pass costing only 50 cents instead of the usual $10.

The development team stated that every event in Season 9 would be filled with rewards, including XP, Style Chips, and Holobux. The events will also feature massive sales with huge discounts, including nearly all cosmetics sold in the game.

Additionally, rewards for League Play, Daily Login Bonuses, and the Brawl Pass have been significantly increased. The cost of the Premium Brawl Pass has been reduced to just 50 Holobux, which can quickly be earned through the Free Pass.

A final farewell event, titled “Thanks for the KOs,” will take place over two weeks, starting on May 23, marking the end of the game. Knockout City was initially released under the EA Originals banner in 2021 but later became a self-published game by Velan after the studio and EA parted ways.

In a review by GameSpot, Alessandro Barbosa praised the game’s core mechanics and whimsical world, stating:

“Knockout City’s greatest strengths lie in its simplicity, but also in the ways it remixes traditional multiplayer elements to create something distinct.”

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