FPS Blacklight: Retribution is shutting down its servers for good
You have until March 11 to play for free.
Fun, futuristic and free multiplayer FPS Blacklight: Retribution, which came out in 2012, will shut down its servers for good next month.
Developer Zombie Studios closed back in 2015, but publisher Hardsuit Labs has kept the game running. In a Reddit post, it confirmed that servers would shut down on March 11, and that until that time all items in the store will be available for free, so log on if you want a last hurrah.
"Hardsuit Labs has been engaged for some time now in some very interesting projects that require the full focus of the development teams and leadership," it said. "The studio capacity and resources are and have been entirely engaged with these projects and will be for the foreseeable future. As such, we officially will no longer be patching, updating, or doing technical support for Blacklight: Retribution. Account migration will officially shut down as of today, as will the official support site."
I reckon I played about 50 hours of Blacklight: Retribution, and remember it to be a fast-paced, addictive shooter. When you accrued a certain number of resource points you could call in giant power armour that would put a target on your back, but meant you could melt enemies in seconds. You also had x-ray vision and could see through walls for a short time using an ability that recharged frequently.
I doubt it'll be a big loss to many players—Steamcharts suggests it's been averaging less than 200 players for the past six months—but it's always a shame to see a game you remember enjoying shut down for good.
If you want to play it one last time, you can grab it on Steam.
Thanks, RPS.
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Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Kevin Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.