After three years, Splash Damage is ending all development for its class-based, online shooter Dirty Bomb. According to the blog posted at its official website, the team cites financial reasons for the decision.
“We’re sorry for the recent radio silence,” wrote Splash Damage. “You deserve better and we haven’t been there for you. It has been a challenging couple of months full of sensitive decisions that we had to make regarding the future of Dirty Bomb. It’s with a heavy heart that, after a bug fix build ships in the upcoming weeks, we will be ending live development and updates on Dirty Bomb.”
The team reported that even though work on Dirty Bomb is ending, it doesn’t plan on pulling out all support just yet. Official servers will still run “as long as the player count supports it.” Splash Damage will also continue to allow players to rent their own servers. Also, the developer will run events, albeit small ones that award extra bonuses — but nothing on a grand scale.
Splash Damage also plans on continuing support on the customer service side. Reports and tickets are still going to be taken care of by its customer service team. Social media channels such as Discord and Facebook will remain online. But like the servers, they will only stay live for as long as some interest in the game exists.
Failure To Adapt
Despite having some support, Dirty Bomb never quite took off like how the developer wanted. In the blog post, the team wrote about facing insurmountable challenges, leading to the game being no longer financially worthwhile to support.
It doesn’t help that our initial take on the game was less than stellar. Earning a mediocre score from us, our own Paul Younger had something — almost prophetic — to say: “Whether there’s enough variety in Dirty Bomb to keep players engaged for the next twelve months is looking doubtful; but it is free, so there’s at least very little harm in giving it a go,” he wrote.
Even though his second take on the game (after some updates) was much more positive, it looks like it wasn’t enough to keep the game popular.
“To close, we’d like to say a heartfelt and sincere thank you for your support these many years,” wrote Splash Damage. “Dirty Bomb is a shooter that we always wanted to make, we could not have done it without you and are forever grateful. The future is bright at Splash Damage, we have many announced and unannounced titles in production that we can’t wait to work with you on!”
