Amazon Game Studio’s multiplayer shooter Crucible has seemingly suffered yet another setback as developer Relentless Studios has announced that the game is being reverted to a closed beta state after previously being openly available as a free-to-play title via Steam.
“Starting tomorrow, Crucible is moving to closed beta,” reads a post on the Crucible blog. “For the most part, your experience as a Crucible player will stay pretty much the same while we’re in beta. One of the biggest changes you’ll see is that we’re going to schedule dedicated time each week when we as devs will be playing with the community and soliciting feedback…Even though Crucible will be in closed beta, nothing is changing about the way you can engage with the game: you’re still welcome to stream, to share screenshots and clips, and to talk about what you experience in the beta.”
As of right now, you can still download and play Crucible via Steam just as you normally would. However, starting at 9 a.m. PT tomorrow, anyone who hasn’t downloaded the game who wishes to play it will need to sign-up for permission to do so via the Crucible website. On top of that, the Crucible team is interested in reaching out to a smaller group of dedicated players in order to get more direct feedback regarding potential improvements moving forward.
“We’re setting up a community council, made up of beta participants of all playstyles from casual to highly competitive players, who we’ll be working especially closely with,” says Relentless Studios. “We’ll have more information on that council, as well as our weekly play schedule, soon.”
This move comes on the heels of the Crucible team’s decision to remove two of the game’s three initially available play modes. As this blog post notes, the team still intends to focus on the Heart of the Hive mode and there don’t currently seem to be any plans to either bring back old modes or introduce new ones.
While a game moving back to closed beta status at this point is certainly unusual, these set-backs for Crucible are hardly a surprise. As we noted in our preview of the game, Crucible just doesn’t feel satisfying to play. It has some great ideas, but they don’t come together to form something that we’d recommend over games like Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, or the other heavy hitters of the competitive multiplayer genre.
This also represents another tremendous set-back for Amazon Game Studios who certainly hoped that Crucible would help Amazon expand into the world of gaming. Now, we imagine Amazon is looking towards the future and the upcoming release of their MMO, New World.