Velan Studios a in the blog post Knockout City announced that the game will shut down forever on June 6th. It's unplayable, except for the PC-only "private server edition", which will allow the beloved PvP dodgeball game to "live forever". The long post addressed to the community explained at length why the difficult decision was made by the team. You can read an excerpt of the explanation below.
“Creating such a distinctive game with no benchmarks and running live services for the first time in most of our careers has made the last few years very challenging. Despite more than 12 million players worldwide, there are aspects of the game that need major disruption to better attract and retain enough players for the game to be sustainable. As we are a small, independent studio, it becomes absolutely impossible for us to continue to support servers while making such systemic changes to the live game.
So it became clear to us that we had to take a step back and pave the way for Velan to innovate what we do best. Now we can take everything we've learned, everything that's accomplished, and anything that needs improvement, and start exploring new possible experiences for Knockout City and other games and products that we're so excited about. We are currently in the process of doing a comprehensive retrospective of every aspect of the game, all the community feedback and analytics data, and even our development processes.
Our hope is that in the not-too-distant future, all this information can be used to start working on what's next in the Knockout City universe. While we can't promise that Knockout City will return, we can promise that you'll continue to see new and innovative games from Velan Studios that will surprise and delight players around the world.”
The team added that the last season, Season 9, will continue in its normal course from February 28. The 12-week season will feature six back-to-back events, each running for two weeks. On the same day, all real money transactions will be removed from the game. The economy of the final season will be drastically modified as a farewell gift to players, including a final Premium Brawl Pass that will cost just 10 cents unlike the $50 versions seen in previous seasons.
“[W]e, we've packed every event in Season 9 with rewards for XP, Style Chips, and thousands of Holobux. Each event also has a huge outlet that offers great discounts, and almost every cosmetic item we've ever sold will be replaced. League Play, Daily Login Bonuses and Brawl Pass rewards have also been greatly increased, and the price of the Premium Brawl Pass will be reduced to just 50 Holobux (you can earn this money easily). Free Battle Pass)!”
A final two-week farewell event for players called "Thank You" will kick off on May 23 and kick off the final days of the game. Knockout City was originally released under the EA Originals banner in 2021. Last year, it switched to a free-to-play model and became a self-published game on Velan as the studio and EA mutually parted ways. In GameSpot's review of Knockout City, Alessandro Barbosa praised the game's core mechanics and cartoonish world, saying, "Knockout City's greatest strength lies in its simplicity, but also in the ways it re-mixes traditional multiplayer elements to create something different."
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