“Starting tomorrow, Crucible is moving to closed beta,” reads the developer update. “We’ll continue following the roadmap we laid out previously and working on map, combat, and system changes to improve the Heart of the Hives experience as well as implementing other improvements based on your feedback and what we think the game needs in order to thrive.”
Almost predictable
But it’s not like we didn’t see major changes coming — though not quite like this. In our assessment of the game, we felt Crucible, though rich with visual personality, was flawed. Our own Kurt Perry said: “It has too many fundamental oversights and technical issues to justify playing it over the array of better alternatives in its genre.”
Other players must have agreed, as the game’s population tanked shortly after launch. According to Steam Charts, Crucible launched with 10,600 players — which isn’t staggering, especially with a free game. Even before the start of June, the player count dropped dramatically. As of today, only around 150 people are still playing Crucible.
