Amazon ended development of its first big-budget video game Crucible, highlighting the online retailer’s continued struggle to make headway in the industry.
According to the official blogpost, “In July we moved Crucible into closed beta. We made a list of features we felt would enhance the player experience, which we shared publicly on our roadmap, and with the exception of custom games (which we expect to ship in the coming days), we completed them all. With those features shipped, our next step was to evaluate the feedback we’ve heard from you, paired with the data we’ve collected, to determine our path forward.”
Crucible was seen as a key test for Amazon’s games division, which was formed in 2012. The game’s launch in May was a disaster, with negative reviews. A month later, Amazon made the game an invite-only closed beta. Before releasing Crucible, the company had already canceled a previously announced game and cut some jobs in the games unit.
“That evaluation led us to a difficult decision: we’ll be discontinuing development on Crucible. We very much appreciate the way that our fans have rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible“, added the blogpost.
They are offering a full refund for any purchases made and they are also disabling credit purchases within Crucible.
In the next few weeks they will be hosting a final playtest and community celebration, both in-game and in their official Discord. After that point, they’ll be disabling matchmaking, although players will still be able to play Crucible through the custom games feature.