EVE: Valkyrie blinks out of existence in a few weeks

Eve Valkyrie ships dogfighting.
(Image credit: CCP)

Earlier this month, CCP rather snuck out the announcement that it would be ending support for EVE: Valykrie, the once-heralded VR space shooter that was an early demonstration of the technology's potential, alongside its non-VR version, Warzone. For a game that's mainly about PvP dogfighting, the end is nigh.

A blogpost announced the news, with the odd opening line that "all good things come to an end, even to the immortal Valkyries." Clearly immortality's a little overrated. CCP says it needs to focus resources elsewhere, but the real hammer blow is that everything is going to just disappear.

The wording on the blog is: "For the time being, you won't see any effect if you own a copy of the game. The game will continue to be playable with our servers remaining active until August 5th 2022.

"On August 5th 2022, EVE: Valkyrie's servers will be turned off, social media profiles will be closed, and this website will go offline. Once servers are deactivated, customer support for EVE: Valkyrie will no longer be provided."

This is artfully ambiguous about whether the singleplayer campaign will be playable after that date. I've asked CCP to clarify this and will update with any response.

Oh well: another one bites the Dust514. Joking aside, Valkyrie stands as one of CCP's better spinoffs, though that's not hard as many were ill-fated from the get go: Dust514's supposed successor Project Nova was cancelled and became Project Legion; an in-progress CCG was scrapped.

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Eve: Valykrie was at least good while it lasted, and certainly stands out as one of my first 'wow' moments with VR, even if its later years saw it fail to retain any significant playerbase.

The game suddenly just blinking out of existence is a sad, if grimly fitting, ending for a great space dogfighting sim.

Rich Stanton

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."