Ubisoft's beleaguered battle-royale game Hyper Scape is shutting down in April

A little over 18 months after launch, Ubisoft is calling time on Hyper Scape, its reasonably entertaining entry in the already well-represented free-to-play battle royale genre.

Hyper Scape made its debut in August 2020 after a short PC-only beta, where it was immediately met with a lukewarm reception - Eurogamer called it "as smart as it is generic". Less than three month later, Ubisoft announced it was embarking on a major overhaul of its 100-player battle royale experience so it could reach its "full potential".

Despite that pledge, development stalled soon after - Hyper Scape's most recent season of content, Season 3, arrived last March, and the game has only been updated once since then, halting at Version 3.1 in April 2021, according to the official website. Even Hyper Scape's Twitter account stopped promoting the game last May. Given those circumstances, word that Ubisoft is formally pulling the plug on the project isn't an enormous surprise.

"We have made the difficult decision to end development of Hyper Scape and shut the game down as of April 28th," the publisher wrote in a post to its website earlier today. "We set out to create a vertical, close-quarters, and fast-paced shooter experience and we are extremely grateful to our community for joining us on our journey. We will be taking key learnings from this game into future products."

"To the Hyper Scape community, thank you for your passion and dedication to the world of Neo Arcadia both inside and outside of the game," Ubisoft concluded. "Your devotion to the game we built will always be cherished."