H1z1 Just Survive’s game mode has been removed from Steam after 3 years on the platform. The news comes from developers Daybreak (also the minds behind Everquest, Planetside 2) who posted an announcement titled ‘A Message from the Just Survive Team’.
“After careful consideration, we’ve made the difficult decision to sunset Just Survive on Wednesday, October 24 at 11 a.m. PT. The excitement of the game’s promise was palpable and its loyal community is still full of ideas for its future. Unfortunately, we are no longer in a position to fulfill its greatness and the current population of the game makes it untenable to maintain.”
H1z1 reached the shores Steam’s early access plan in January 2015. Hailing as a survival MMO where players would face off against zombies and other players. By March 2015, it had reached 1 million copies sold. Its social element helped further the game and turned into a somewhat cult classic. Soon enough, everyone was playing the hottest survival game of 2015. In 2016, Daybreak decided to do some splicing.
On September 20th, 2016, H1z1 separated into two game modes; H1Z1 Just Survive and H1Z1 King of the Kill. Just Survive retained the PvPvE experience whilst King of the Kill founded a battle royale spinoff. Both were popular but KotK struck a chord with players as it was one of the first games to feature royale gameplay. What followed was 2 years of more name changes, updates, and community tournaments.
Unfortunately, Just Survive hadn’t aged well while King of the Kill (now known as just H1Z1) was getting ready to launch out of early access by February of 2018. Fast forward to today where in a month alone, the battle royale centric H1Z1 has surpassed 10 million players on PlayStation 4. All this success has managed to drown its older brother Just Survive which now, ironically, can’t survive.
For those who own Just Survive and wish to bid it a final farewell, you can do so until 24th October 11 AM PDT; the day when the servers switch off indefinitely. For now, the game has been pulled from the store (the page still remains for those who wish to pay respects) along with its microtransactions. It’s an odd thing considering how important H1Z1 has been in the PC community over the years but hey, at least we’ve got its battle royale counterpart, Right?