If you pre-ordered Dying Light: The Beast on a PlayStation 4 or an Xbox One, the version you were waiting for is not coming. Techland confirmed on July 14th that it has cancelled the last-gen editions outright and will refund everyone who paid, as GamesRadar reports. The reason the studio gave is blunt: the roughly 13-year-old hardware just can't run the game.
In its statement, Techland said Dying Light: The Beast "was built from the ground up to take full advantage of current-generation hardware," and that "its open world, advanced visuals, and fluid combat and traversal all depend on processing power and memory that previous-generation consoles simply cannot provide." As work on the ports continued, the team decided that shipping them would mean compromises heavy enough to wreck the experience it set out to create.
What Happens To Your Pre-Order
Anyone who pre-ordered or bought Dying Light: The Beast expecting to play it on PS4 or Xbox One is eligible for a full refund and should contact their retailer or storefront to sort it out. "We know many of you were looking forward to playing on PS4 or Xbox One, and we are truly sorry for the disappointment this causes," the studio wrote.
There is a second group caught in this that stings a little more. The Beast began life as downloadable content for Dying Light 2 Stay Human, and PS4 owners who bought that game's Ultimate Edition were in line to receive it. Those players had effectively already paid for it years ago through the season pass, as Push Square notes, and now they are getting money back instead of the sequel content they were promised.
This did not come out of nowhere, even if the timing feels abrupt. When The Beast launched on September 18th, 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S, Techland said it was still committed to the PS4 and Xbox One versions and aimed to release them by the end of that year. That deadline slipped by in silence. Through the first half of 2026, players kept asking where the last-gen ports were, and the studio said nothing until this week's cancellation.
The scale of what Techland was trying to port explains a lot. The Beast was originally a Dying Light 2 expansion, but once Techland brought back original protagonist Kyle Crane and the scope kept growing, it spun off into a standalone release. The story picks up 13 years after the first game, hands Crane a set of Beast-mode powers, and drops him into an open world you can tear through on foot with parkour or behind the wheel of a 4x4. That is a lot to ask of a console that shipped back in 2013.
Another Marker In The Slow Death Of Last-Gen
Step back from the refund headlines and this reads as one more milestone in a generation winding down. For years, the PS5 and Xbox Series machines shared nearly every big release with their predecessors, because the install base on PS4 and Xbox One was simply too large to ignore.
The clearest signal came from the biggest series in the business. Activision has confirmed that this year's Call of Duty will skip PS4 and Xbox One entirely, its first mainline entry to leave last-gen behind since Call of Duty: Ghosts back in 2013, per MP1st. When the franchise that has propped up the old hardware longer than almost anyone else steps off, the writing is on the wall. GameSpot flagged The Beast's cancellation the same way, framing it as yet another game skipping last-gen.
For anyone still gaming on a PS4 or Xbox One, this is the part that matters. These cancellations are not one-offs so much as a pattern, and each one narrows the list of new games those consoles can still play. The upside for the games that do go current-gen-only is real, more memory and horsepower to build with, fewer compromises to hit an aging spec, but it also means the clock on that old box under your TV is running down faster than it was a year ago.
So which side are you on? Is Techland right to cut the last-gen versions loose rather than ship a compromised Dying Light: The Beast, and are you ready to call PS4 and Xbox One officially done, or is there still life left in the old hardware?
Sound off in the comments.
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