Mech shooter Hawken to be removed from Steam in January

The free-to-play mech-based shooter, Hawken, is shutting down its PC servers, with the game set to be removed from Steam on January 2, 2018. According to a Facebook post by the developer, the reasoning behind the decision is to "refocus [its] development efforts". In-game microtransactions will no longer be purchasable starting from today as well.

While the PC version has not received an update in years, the developer had been promising a "PC relaunch" for the game this year. There was even a 'Soft Launch' of the relaunch update back in May. However, it seems the dwindling player numbers on the PC version was not enough to warrant further development.

The developer said the following in its PC version closure announcement:

It’s been an incredible journey since the introduction of Hawken on Steam, back in 2014. The game’s success has been largely due to your continuous support. The Hawken community has been the cornerstone of this ever-evolving franchise.

It’s been an incredibly rewarding experience working alongside such a dedicated PC player base. Your feedback and support has been invaluable to us, and the team looks forward to creating more great games based on what we’ve learned from you.

The game has had a rough development since its inception back in 2011. Although the original publisher, Meteor Entertainment, managed to acquire millions in funding for the game, the company went under in 2014. The title then went on to be picked up by Reloaded Games of APB: Reloaded fame, launching Hawken as an early access title on Steam.

It seems that now the game is under 505 Games, with an Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launch occurring last year. For now, there is no word on whether the console editions will also be shutting down, with only the PC version being affected. And since there is no LAN or player hosted server support, these will be the last few months that any interested PC players will be able to try out Hawken.

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