The Free-To-Play shooter Loadout is set to shut down this month
The Free-To-Play shooter Loadout is set to shut down this month
Loadout has been reviewed positively on Steam and PS4, offering players a unique weapon customisation mechanics which can allow players to develop an uncountable number of wacky weapons that can be used to define each player’s role/class within the game. Even so, the game’s revenue has remained flat in recent months, with the rising costs of game servers and other could services making the game unprofitable.Â
Edge of Reality says that Loadout has received “a few death blows”, from rising running costs to major game overhauls that would be required to update the game to offer GDPR compliance and to port the game away from a discontinued cloud service.Â
All of these factors could have brought Loadout to an end, with all three coming in a similar time frame creating a mountain of work that cannot be climbed by a small company with a limited income. Because of these reasons, Loadout is now set to go permanently offline on May 24th.  Â
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  Why now?
Loadout just received a few death blows. Any one of these could have been fatal, but with all of them hitting at once, it’s clear that we have no choice but to shut it down.
GDPR
The well-intended GDPR legislation creates major burdens for small companies to do business in the EU, starting on 5/25. We don’t have the resources to update Loadout to GDPR compliance, and a big portion of Loadout players come from the EU. Sadly, while big companies have the resources to comply with the GDPR, that’s not always the case for small businesses. We still protect your privacy, and we wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise. We just don’t have the resources to overhaul Loadout and implement new features to meet a large list of new requirements.Cloud end of service
Loadout depends on an old product from our main cloud provider, and that product is also ending service. I can’t speak for them, but GDPR may also be a factor. Porting Loadout to use their new product is a major undertaking, and we don’t have the resources to do that.Rising costs
Other cloud products recently getting discontinued are resulting in much higher server costs, while Loadout’s revenues stay flat. This just put Loadout deep into the red, losing an alarming amount of money per month.So, enjoy your last moments of Loadout, and record them for posterity!
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For those who are unaware, the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a new ruleset which will come into force on May 25th. These rules prevent the private data of EU citizens from leaving the block and can impose huge fines on companies who break the EU’s data laws.Â
These laws will come into force at a time where Loadout was already in a dire financial situation, adding additional costs to a game that was already becoming financially unfeasible.
Loadout will go permanently offline on May 24th. Â
You can join the discussion on the free-to-play shooter Loadout shutting down later this month on the OC3D Forums.Â