Failed Cold War Shooter Pulled from Steam After Five Months in Early Access

The developers of ’83 have failed to attract players, and investors are no longer willing to support the studio.

This year on PC via Steam, studio Blue Dot Games released ’83, a Cold War-themed tactical online shooter designed for 40-versus-40 battles:

’83 is a continuation of the traditions of the Rising Storm series, a game of the accessible realism genre. Members of our team worked on all previous parts of Rising Storm, as well as the Red Orchestra series. Some of us have been working in this genre for fifteen years.

However, the game did not become a major hit. ’83 has a peak concurrent player count on Steam of 813 users, and recently the peak has hovered within a few dozen players.

In late September, Blue Dot Games announced that it is suspending sales of ’83. The creators note that they might return the shooter to sale in the future if they manage to attract investors willing to support further development:

We hoped that the first major content update, combined with a discount, a free demo, and great coverage at the FPS Games Show, would breathe new life into the game, but unfortunately, that did not happen. Our CCU (concurrent players) figure turned out to be significantly below the level needed to maintain investor confidence in the project’s future and support us on the path to version 1.0. Therefore, the current commercial reality is that we are forced to suspend sales of the game while we look for other options. The game will still be available, the servers will remain running, but in good conscience, we cannot continue selling the game while its future is so uncertain.

The Steam page for ’83 is available at the following link. At the time of publication, the game has not been pulled from sale.

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