Splash Damage, developers that gave us classic shooter like
Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory, and underdeveloped
Brink, announced its spiritual successor in 2014. Titled
Dirty Bomb, Splash's new first-person online shooter was supposed to find its niche and rival with beloved FPS titles like Blizzard's
Overwatch or Ubisoft's
Rainbow Six: Siege. It looks like
Dirty Bomb just lost that fight.
In the wake of shrinking player count and declining in popularity,
Splash Damage has decided to ultimately give up on Dirty Bomb and move on to develop brand new, yet announced titles. "
It’s with a heavy heart that, after a bug fix build ships in the upcoming weeks, we will be ending live development and updates on Dirty Bomb," the studio announced on
Dirty Bomb's official website.
"After regaining publishing rights for DB nearly two years ago, we staffed up a load of developers and tried our best to deliver a Dirty Bomb experience that would be feature-rich with tons of new content, while maintaining its great gameplay feel & balance," Splash Damage’s PR person explained.
"Unfortunately, despite all the added time and resources, there were some challenges we couldn’t overcome, and we were not able to make DB the success that we hoped it could be. The bottom line is that we can’t financially justify continuing to work on the game we love."
The studio knows well that there are still players who check out
Dirty Bomb on a daily basis and will keep servers up for them to enjoy, as long as there is a meaningful number of players using them in the supported regions. As for getting your money back, Splash Damage is going to refund the All Merc Pack DLC to everyone who purchased it by January 31st, 2019 – the money you spent will go back in your Steam wallet and all the unlocked Mercs will remain in your account.
Dirty Bomb takes first person shooters back to their purest roots in a fast-paced team game that will challenge even the most competent players. The game won’t hold your hand, in fact it is more likely to kick your teeth in. With no controller support or aim assist, all that lies between you and certain death is skill and reaction. Work together or die alone in the most challenging team-based FPS.
Dirty Bomb launched for PC in June 2015.