- The Culling rises from the dead a second time with new pay-per-play monetisation model - 12 May 2020
Beleaguered battle royale game The Culling has risen from the dead once more - despite apparently being canned for good last March - this time sporting a monetisation model that will require users to pay for the matches they want to play. The Culling, a survival-themed last-man-standing affair from developer Xaviant, launched on PC and Xbox in October 2017 following a period of early access. Its distinctive take on the battle royale formula - incorporating scavenging, crafting, and trap-making - immediately earned it fans, but its post-launch fortunes were short-lived and a rapidly dwindling player base (caused in no small part by the meteoric rise of PUBG) saw Xaviant ending support mere months later. Six months after that , Xaviant surprised dropped The Culling 2 on the world, and immediately felt the full force of a backlash from fans upset the developer had turned its attention to a…
- The Culling appears to finally be dead - 19 March 2019
It's the game that, up until now, could never quite die: but this time The Culling is gone for real, as developer Xaviant has said the game will close its doors in May. In a post on The Culling's website , director of operations Josh Van Veld explained the time had come to pull the plug. "When we launched the Origins update and made the game free to play, our hope was that the revenue generated from in-app purchases would be enough to sustain our team and support ongoing development. Read more
- Battle royale game The Culling: Origins is closing in May - 18 March 2019
The Culling: Origins , the free-to-play do-over of The Culling that went live in September 2018, will be closed in May. Developer Xaviant said in a farewell message  that it had hoped in-app purchased would generate enough revenue to support the battle royale game, but it hasn't worked out.  Xaviant decided to make The Culling free to play after the release of The Culling 2 in July 2018 went disastrously wrong . Players were unhappy with the state of the game, which deviated dramatically from the original, and were also angry that Xaviant halted development of The Culling just a couple of months after it went into full release so it could work on the sequel. The backlash was so intense that the studio elected to pull the plug on The Culling 2 just a few weeks after releasing it and turn its attention back to the first game instead.  "When we launched the Origins upda…
- The Culling shutting down servers on May 15th - 18 March 2019
Despite being one of the first on the battle royale block, even going free-to-play hasn’t been enough to save The Culling . Developers Xaviant have announced that the lights go out on their dystopian game show-themed survival shooter on May 15th. It’s been a rough year for the studio, with The Culling 2 announced , released and shut down due to lack of player interest within a three month span. They were hoping to re-launch the original game as free-to-play and have future development supported through in-app purchases. Sadly, it just didn’t work out that way. (more…)
- Have You Played The Culling? - 12 March 2019
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. It’s pleasing to see gas traps appearing in Apex Legends , courtesy of token toxic male Caustic. But let us lower our heads and observe a moment of silence for the fallen progenitor of such useful and deadly battle royale flatulence. That’s right, The Culling . (more…)
- Podcast: A young person explains battle royale to us - 24 January 2019
Battle royale games. For a long time the RPS treehouse was unable to comprehend these chaotic, destructive influences on society. Shooters, yes, we understand. Survival games, we get it. But 100-person death marches in a shrinking zone of hate? What s so good about that? Well, this week we ve got a young person* to help us decipher this most murderous of riddles. (more…)
- Patch Notes: Bot Stuff - 24 October 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F11801602%2F03de5f706e7195f6b0b6bc1652184d3857738f82.png Greetings contestants! Last time we spoke we were beginning what we thought was a short road to Xbox Certification. A few weeks later, it appears that road might’ve been a bit longer than our GPS led us to believe. In retrospect, using Mapquest in 2018 was probably not the best choice. Jokes aside, we’re still in the midst of the certification tornado. Standing squarely in the center, it’s difficult to say exactly when the Xbox One version will be given the green light, but we’re hopeful that it’ll be sooner than later. Though this process can be somewhat nebulous, we’ll continue to keep you updated whenever anything of note changes or if any setbacks occur. While the Xbox One version is still our priority, we know that the current patch on PC has gotten a little long…
- Dev Diary: Mapquest - 3 October 2018
Greetings contestants! The air is crisp, the leaves are beginning to change, pumpkin spice is in our lattes, fall is officially upon us.Though the clocks are soon to be moving back, this change in season has us looking at the road ahead. Origins has been a passion project for us here at Xaviant and we’ve been moved by the kind words, well wishes and messages of support you’ve given us since its release. We know that The Culling is as special for many of you as it is for us and we’re thrilled to return to the island once again. As exciting as Origins is, it is just the first big step in what we hope is a much longer journey. As we enter a new season, today feels like as good a day as any to share some of our far-reaching plans, as well as deliver a state of the union as to what’s currently cooking at L’Studio Xaviant. Immediate Xbox One: Our focus is to launch The Culling: Origins on Xbo…
- Dev Diary: Mini Stagger and Showdown and Early Closure - 25 September 2018
Greetings Contestants! It’s been a very busy week here at studio Xav. We’re having a blast with Origins and we’re proud to say that many of you have reached out to share that you feel the same way. We’re doing our best to get as many new contestants onto the Island as possible and to spread the good news that is Origins. You may have heard that we have announced The Culling: Origins Island Invitational, a $25K streamer tournament coming up this weekend. We haven’t announced all of the participants yet, but you’ll be able to check them all out on Saturday, September 29th at 8pm ET / 5PM PT on Twitch. We’re super excited to showcase The Culling: Origins on a grand stage, but we’re also looking to get the game to a stage it has been on before and one that you’ve been asking about quite a bit: Xbox One. As of this moment we’re getting close to submitting the Xbox version to certification. O…
- Patch Preview - Scheduled for September 21, 2018 - 20 September 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F11801602%2F03de5f706e7195f6b0b6bc1652184d3857738f82.png Greetings contestants! As we close in on a week of The Culling being free-to-play, we have our first post-Origins patch inbound. Rather than making sweeping changes this new patch is intended instead to get melee combat feeling even closer to Day 1, as well as to address some big quality of life issues and bugs. We’ll have more to announce about our longer-term roadmap, including when you can expect Origins on Xbox One, soon. Servers will be down Friday, September 20th at 8AM Eastern for up to 4 hours. Changes - Melee Combat Melee attack animation playback speed is no longer affected by weapon speed (to match Day 1 combat timings) Fix for hit reactions when Shoved not looking correct from some directions Fix for melee input queuing bug resulting in the ability to char…
- Survey Says: Attack and Shove Speed - 19 September 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F11801602%2F173d24efdb5bc662be947e4dafa83e5cb34bd53e.jpg Greetings Contestants! Yesterday, we shared our findings related to shove spam becoming a “thing,” and took you down the rabbit hole explaining how we intend to make some small tweaks to help you escape the grasp of a nasty shove sandwich in duos. As it turns out, the rabbit hole goes quite a bit deeper. Some of you have noted that combat still feels a little off compared to Day 1. You’ve given us the feedback that fast weapons are too darn fast and that the meta is evolving into something generally spammier than it used to be. One intrepid community member even took the time to create a side-by-side video that illustrated some differences. As a result, we’ve taken a deeper dive and we’ve found a couple of likely suspects. In the Day 1 build a bug with the weapon spee…
- Survey Says: Shove Stagger - 18 September 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F11801602%2Ffbe894cf1c04d32c882fa50e93b9dd4de2ee5f5d.png Greetings Contestants! Thank you all for coming out en masse for the Origins launch! We’re happy with our initial results but we’re certainly not satisfied yet. We think there are plenty of potential contestants out there who don’t even know about The Culling or that it’s free-to-play. We’ve got some big plans to change that, so stay tuned. We also want to thank you for being so excellent about reporting issues and giving feedback. Origins was always intended as a fresh start and that means there is plenty of forward progress to be made. This means a new opportunity for us to put lessons learned into practice. First off, we want to address the issue of missing Tokens. We know that some number of users have not received the Tokens that are included as part of the Found…
- The Culling returns in free-to-play form - 16 September 2018
Game show style battle royale The Culling has returned in free-to-play form, allowing players to take in the jungle sights, bludgeon one another to death, and ruminate on the dystopic reality TV they re making, all without paying for the privilege. (more…)
- The Culling: Origins' free-to-play relaunch is today - 14 September 2018
The Culling is going back to the beginning. With the battle royale’s sequel now officially shelved , developer Xaviant has returned to its predecessor; today it relaunches as The Culling: Origins. If you played the original back in its early access days, it might be familiar.  “When The Culling originally launched in March of 2016, it had an exciting, ‘anything goes’ approach to battle royale that was eventually sanded down over the course of many updates,” says Xaviant . “Origins brings back that special mojo by returning to the game’s roots, incorporating the spirit of Day 1 combat, perks, airdrops and overall gameplay.” It’s a dramatic shift that’s also been accompanied by the move to free-to-play. That’s not the only difference, however; Origins has a new art direction, XP, levelling, leaderboards, new…
- The Culling: Origins Goes Free-to-Play September 14th - 12 September 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F11801602%2Fd347906cd65606926b8c2287f2b384829a8c55a8.jpg Greetings Contestants! Battle Royale is back. Not only is that the official tagline of The Culling: Origins, but it’s also very true, which makes it the best slogan of September 2018. With Origins right around the corner, we think it’s time to give you an overview of the update as well as answer some lingering questions. We’re in the relative calm before the storm of our relaunch, so it seems fitting to take a moment to speak from the heart. Two months ago, our studio felt like we’d crashed into the rocks. We were stuck and there was no clear path forward. We had to take a moment, take a breath, and think about how we’d steered our ship into such a predicament. After some real, serious soul-searching, we realized that there was no clear path forward unless we went bac…
- The Culling: Developer Diary 3 - Special Announcement - 6 September 2018
Xaviant Director of Operations Josh Van Veld offers a special announcement on The Culling: Origins Watch here
- The Culling: Developer Video Diary 2 - 23 August 2018
Xaviant Director of Operations Josh Van Veld delivers a development update for The Culling and shares when you might expect to be playing Origins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZqIzZUBpq4&feature=youtu.be
- Sales Format Changing - 22 August 2018
In preparation for the Origins update and a shift to Free-to-Play we have taken The Culling (incl Day 1) off of sale on Steam. We want to offer a huge thank you to all of our founders for your support.
- Survey Says: Building a Better Culling - 8 August 2018
If you haven’t heard, the team here at Xaviant is working on a big new update called The Culling: Origins. The goal of the update is to take the game back to its roots. The look and feel will be very close to the Day 1 version, but we’ll be keeping the bug fixes, improved art content, and performance optimizations that were solid steps forward. Along with this update, The Culling will also become free-to-play. We’ve been looking closely at the Day 1 Reference build and also reviewing all the changes we made made way back in the day. We know the game wasn’t perfect on Day 1, but we also recognize that on the whole, our changes took things in the wrong direction. As confident as we are in our abilities, we also need a process where we can make improvements and additions without jeopardizing what made the game so special in the first place. Some of those changes will be coming with the rel…
- The Culling: Developer Video Diary 1 - 3 August 2018
Find out more about The Culling's journey to F2P and return to active development in our latest Developer Video Diary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo5f5ByDplk&=&feature=youtu.be
