The ambitious Mavericks: Proving Grounds, which proposed having massive, 1000-player Battle Royale matches, has been cancelled due to a lack of funding. The developer, Automaton Games, has been placed into administration for further handling during this period of insolvency.
The project was first shown in 2017 and named Project X at the time, which sought to be a tactical shooter with up to 1000 players at once and offering a 400-player Battle Royale mode. As the developer does not have the funds to continue working on the project, it will need to be picked up by another if it hopes to release the game, else we are likely to never see the project as it becomes shelved.
It would also appear that those working within the organization had little warning of the financial troubles faced by the developer, as indicated by this Twitter message posted on July 26.
To the Founders and to our guests in the Forge, our Alpha play session is live and the new patch is ready to download.
See you on the Dern, best of luck to you all. You'll need it. pic.twitter.com/cr3JRLO1QF
— Mavericks (@PlayMavericks) July 26, 2019
Hopefully those working on the project had some manner of advanced notice that they would be without employment, though the tweet suggests otherwise.
We do not know what led to these financial difficulties, and the oddity of the situation lies in how sudden everything seemed to occur. That the developer was attempting to push yet another Battle Royale game into an already saturated market might have been a factor in the abandoning of the project. Perhaps in 2017 the notion of creating another game in the genre seemed like a good idea, but a revaluation today would show that there are simply too many games trying to do the same thing, and few of them do it well.
Recently here at TheGamer we discussed the topic of if and how the Battle Royale genre could be salvaged. When one thinks of the genre, Fortnite often comes to mind first, followed by any of the others like Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 with its “Blackout” mode, Battlefield V, Realm Royale, Grand Theft Auto Online, and recently, Fallout 76. The last one is proof that too many developers are attempting to jump onto the overloaded bandwagon.
Had Mavericks: Proving Grounds released, one would be hard pressed to justify trying out yet another game in the genre, and the prospect of these massive games with 1000 other players is promising, but that would demand having an active population, when even Fortnite has recently seen dips in its player base.
Mavericks: Proving Grounds may not have been able to secure the funding it needed to bring its vision to completion, but it is equally as likely that the developers took a hard look at the state of gaming between 2017 and now and simply decided not to pursue the project further.