Dauntless, the monster looking sport that made such a splash when it launched 5 years in the past, is coming to an finish. Developer Phoenix Labs has introduced on Steam that no additional updates or new content material will probably be launched, and the sport will change into unplayable on the finish of May.
“Dauntless is shutting down on May 29, 2025,” the studio wrote. “Dauntless will obtain no extra content material or updates. The sport will now not be out there to play on May 29, 2025.”
That’s the whole message, a really bare-bones farewell to a sport that got here out sturdy however struggled badly in recent times. Dauntless was initially introduced as “the PC Monster Hunter sport we have all been ready for,” which held up for about six months till Capcom determined to present us the true take care of Monster Hunter: World. Name recognition was clearly an element however it was additionally merely a greater sport, and Dauntless was shortly overshadowed.
The first indicators of actual bother got here to mild final yr, as developer Phoenix Labs introduced in May 2024 that it was shedding staff and cancelling in-development tasks in a “last-ditch resort” to make sure the studio might survive. But issues went from dangerous to a lot worse in December when Dauntless lastly shed its Epic Games Store exclusivity and made the transfer to Steam. Instead of ushering in a brand new wave of badly-needed gamers, the Steam launch was a disaster: Player progress was reset, and a brand new, universally-disliked monetization mannequin was rolled out, main shortly to an overwhelmingly damaging person ranking.
In January, a little bit over a month after that Steam launch, Phoenix Labs laid off “nearly all of the studio,” saying that it will “share extra particulars within the coming weeks about what this implies for Dauntless and Fae Farm,” Phoenix Labs’ Stardew Valley-like life sim. This clearly solutions that query concerning Dauntless, however for now there is not any phrase as as to if Fae Farm will share an analogous destiny.
Some on the Dauntless subreddit pinned the blame for its failure on Phoenix Labs’ acquisition by crypto firm Forte in 2023, which went nearly fully unnoticed till a 2024 Game Developer report introduced the buyout to mild. There’s no approach to decide what affect that basically had, however no matter that there is not any getting round the truth that Dauntless was clearly overpowered by Monster Hunter’s arrival on PC—and with Monster Hunter: Wilds now just some days away, and searching superb, that state of affairs was about to get even worse, placing any form of actual turnaround successfully out of attain.
I’ve reached out to Phoenix Labs to inquire about the way forward for Fae Farm and can replace if I obtain a reply.
