Turtle Rock has announced that just over three years on from the original game's release, Evolve's online servers are shutting down. You'll still be able to play the classic game -- if you paid for it -- using its peer to peer server system and in private matches if you can get a few friends together, but the Stage 2 free to play version of the game is officially shutting down online come September.
Evolve was an exciting experiment for Turtle Rock that never quite paid off. The high-concept title is an asymmetrical multiplayer shooting (and stomping) experience where one player takes on the role of an increasingly powerful monster who has to evade the other four players, who act as hunters, until they're powerful enough to turn the tables on their human pursuers.
Although a novel concept and a unique multiplayer experience when first released, Evolve suffered out of the gate with an overbearing DLC strategy pushed by new publishing bosses at 2K Games after THQ shut down and it lacked a lot of content in the early days. There were just two monsters to hunt when it initially debuted and one of them, the Goliath, was clearly far more balanced than its Lovecraftian-inspired counterpart, the Kraken. That problem only intensified with the release of subsequent monsters like the Wraith.
It also lacked game modes, with only one main hunt mode and two derivatives, which boiled down to shorter versions of the same thing. While a campaign mode offered some interesting progressive aspects to the game, they too felt tacked on and far from fleshed out.
And so the game suffered. The playerbase quickly well away after launch and even a free to play version "Stage 2" couldn't save it a year and a half later. Now that F2P mode is shutting down on September 3.
Did any of you enjoy Evolve while it was fresh?
