Knockout City to shut down in June

Velan Studios' Knockout City will be shutting down on June 6.

In a post on the game's website, game director Jeremy Russo announced that the servers will be shutting around the world at 12pm UTC on that day, "and the game will no longer be playable."

Season 9, which is due to launch on February 28, will be the title's final. After that, real-money transactions will be taken out.

"Even after the official servers go offline, Knockout City can continue to be played for eternity by fans that want to host their own servers," Russo said, saying that more information about this "final version of the game" will be shared "soon."

He added that this was "an extremely difficult decision" for the studio, explaining that despite 12 million players, there were "several aspects of the game in need of major disruption to better attract and retain enough players to be sustainable."

"Since we are a small, indie studio, it’s simply impossible for us to make those kinds of systemic changes in the live game while continuing to support it," Russo said. "So it became clear to us that we needed to take a step back and pave the way for Velan to do what we do best by innovating."

The studio is exploring options for what could come next "in the Knockout City universe" but Russo said he couldn't "promise that Knockout City will be back."

The title originally launched in May 2021, published by EA. It temporarily went free-to-play in June 2021, and passed the five million players mark then.

It became free-to-play permanently a year ago, with Velan also deciding to publish the game independently going forward.