The Culling 2
No game has failed in recent memory quite as hard as The Culling 2. The Culling’s production ended six months ago and after radio silence from the developers, Xaviant Games, The Culling 2’s release date was announced on July 9, a day before it was released on July 10. That was strike one. July 10 also happened to be set in the same week that Fortnite’s heavily anticipated Season 5 launched. That was strike two. Releasing a Battle Royale game the same week as the launch of the world’s most popular Battle Royale game (and possibly most popular game overall) is probably not the wisest move. Strike three was the game’s lack of understanding in what made it popular. The original title was a melee-focused Battle Royale game with a small number of players in each match. The Culling 2 completely ignored that and instead launched as seemingly a copy of PUBG, much to the community’s dismay. Today, you’ll find The Culling 2 and The Culling subreddits plagued with angry players. The description of the subreddit, which only has 114 users, reads, “this sub remains as an archive to the s**tshow that was The Culling 2.” Most of the posts there read similarly.
Simply put, the launch of The Culling 2 could not have gone worse. With a peak player count of 249, it was only a matter of time until this game would see the final nail in its coffin. Surprisingly, that nail came from the developers themselves, who just over a week after the game’s launch announced that The Culling 2 would see its servers shut down and itself pulled from all marketplaces. Xaviant Games isn’t giving up just yet, though. After pulling The Culling 2, Xaviant Games launched, or rather, re-launched, The Culling. In their video announcing this, Xaviant Games’ Director of Operations, Josh Josh Van Veld, all but asked fans to ignore that The Culling 2 ever existed and instead asked that fans allow them to refocus their efforts on the game their fans originally fell in love with, The Culling.
