Rest in peace, Battleborn – we barely knew you … or played you. The Gearbox Software hero shooter goes offline for good today, making the game unplayable more than four years after launch.
The writing has been hanging on the wall for a long time, with digital currency being withdrawn from sale and the game already being pulled from digital stores. However, to this day, players who were still interested in Battleborn were able to play the game normally. That’s over, because not only are peer-to-peer multiplayer matches out of play, but the single player campaign as well.
Battleborn’s fate was sealed almost immediately, as it launched at almost the exact same time as Blizzard’s Overwatch. The two games are very similar, featuring heroes with a variety of unique moves and weapons, but it was Blizzard’s game that caught on. Battleborn’s price dropped quickly and Gearbox switched, well, gears, to other games like Borderlands 3. That was a much more successful project for the studio, releasing everything from Xbox One to Google Stadia and receiving various DLC packs.
Battleborn actually started life as a completely different game. Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 was first announced as a Tarantino-style version of the WWII franchise, but it was eventually dropped and some elements included in Battleborn.
Despite the Brothers in Arms franchise’s long hiatus, it’s not dead. A television series is in development and Randy Pitchford, Gearbox CEO confirmed that the studio is still working on the series just a few days ago. However, he stressed that he couldn’t share or “make any promises,” so it doesn’t sound like the company is ready to actually announce a game.
