Just over four months on from launch, multiplayer shooter Frostpoint VR is already shutting down.
An update on the game’s Steam page, published over the weekend, confirms the PC VR title will see its servers deactivated on May 9th. No reason was given for the move and no mention was made of refunds for existing owners.
Released in December 2020, Frostpoint was developed by Wasteland 3 and The Mage’s Tale developer, Inxile Entertainment, and published by Thirdverse. Its multiplayer battles mixed modern and sci-fi weaponry on snowy battlefields, where teams fought for control of points. The game also had a PvE element in which alien NPCs stalked the battlefield.
Despite being developed by a big studio, we thought Frostpoint was lacking when it launched last year. In fact, we noted in our review that servers were struggling to fill up even on release day – we mostly saw games with only half of the 20 player limit met. Even then, this is a pretty fast turnover.
“After all my matches in Frostpoint, the only lingering thoughts it’s really managed to leave with me are of what might have gone wrong with it,” we said in our review. “Did Microsoft’s 2018 acquisition of Inxile scupper plans for something wholly more ambitious? Or is Frostpoint’s barebones set of options and unremarkable gameplay really the result of three years of work from a very talented studio? We may never know the answer, but the result leaves a lot to be desired.”
Thirdverse itself says it’s working on new VR games to announce in the future. As for Inxile? Now that the company is owned by Microsoft, which has publicly said on multiple occasions that it’s not focused on VR for Xbox, it seems unlikely the team will be working on anything new for some time.
