Splash Damage ends live development on Dirty Bomb two months after launch

Splash Damage has announced that it will end live development and ongoing updates on its free-to-play FPS Dirty Bomb, just under two months after the game was fully released.

In a blog post on the game's website, Splash Damage stated that servers would remain up "as long as there are a meaningful number of players using them in the supported regions." The game's All Merc DLC pack will be refunded to anyone who purchases it before January 31, 2019 as the developers will not be adding any of the additional content players who purchased it would have expected it, though the existing content unlocked by the DLC will remain unlocked by purchasers.

Dirty Bomb released its 1.0 version in August following a three-year beta and a bit of a wild ride through development. Splash Damage originally began creating the IP to pre-alpha, but after hitting a snag with publishing, they signed on with Nexon to publish the game. This was the plan for some time, but as the game neared launch, Splash Damage opted to take the game back over and self-publish once again, acquiring the rights back in early 2017.

According to the developer blog post, despite staffing up heavily upon re-acquiring publishing rights and increased development resources, "there were some challenges we couldn't overcome, and we were not able to make DB the success that we hoped it could be. The bottom line is that we can't financially justify continuing to work on the game we love."

Though Dirty Bomb will meet an eventual end, Splash Damage will remain together to work on both currently announced titles as well as unannounced projects.