Tweet
Last week, PlayStation 4 owners that pre-ordered Overkill's The Walking Dead received a notice saying that the game has been cancelled. Sony started to issue refunds to customers as a result of this. However, publisher 505 Games was quick to comment, saying that the game was merely "postponed" as the game was still in development.
Today, the console versions of Overkill's The Walking Dead has been canceled. Skybound Entertainment, the studio that permits The Walking Dead license to be used, said that it has terminated their contract with Starbreeze Studios, a studio with more than a few ongoing troubles.
Skybound says, "we did our best to work with Starbreeze and resolve many issues that we saw with the game, but ultimately Overkill’s The Walking Dead did not meet our standards nor is it the quality that we were promised." They continue on to say how sorry they are to their fans and "share in their disappointment in the game."
Released in November 2018 on the PC, Overkill's The Walking Dead was first announced back in 2014. It suffered a couple of delays totalling over a year. Upon release, the game was largely panned by most critics and consumers. Sales figures for the game weren't anything to write home about and for a co-op focused title, it meant that those who were playing were having difficulty finding full lobbies.
I largely wrote the game off after a friend and I played through a pre-release beta. The beta suffered from poor gameplay design that wasn't much fun to play.
Overkill's The Walking Dead also seems to have been pulled from being sold on Steam at some point today. This was done prior to the the rest of the second season of content being fully released to those that purchased it.
Payday 2 was a great improvement over the first and i was excited for future games from the studio, but i have zero enthusiasm for The Walking Dead so i was ignoring it from the start. Then Starbreeze started talking about VR and then... pretty much nothing, now years later the Overkill game is a garbage fire and Starbreeze seems determined to self destruct.
I'll be surprised if either team manage to pull themselves together.
That one was worse than Overkill's The Walking Dead if you can believe it.
Overkill was (is? lol) working on Payday 3 at last check as well. Unless they secure a new publisher (or better still, that they get bought out by another company), I don't think that one is going to be happening, which is probably for the best.