Yager sunsetting The Cycle: Frontier after cheaters cause irreparable damage

Yager is shutting down its PvPvE extraction shooter The Cycle: Frontier after just over a year.

The Tencent-owned studio, which has previously worked on titles including Spec Ops: The Line and Dreadnought, said it has to face up to the reality that The Cycle isn't financially viable. As a result, the company will be sunsetting the shooter on September 27, 2023.

"This is a very hard decision for us, but after debating it for a long while, we had to accept this is the best course of action for Yager," said the studio in a blog post.

Elaborating on how it ended up here, Yager said The Cycle delivered "decent results" across multiple closed alphas and betas, and quickly surpassed all expectations when it launched in June last year.

"Big streamers caught wind of the game and started playing it before hundreds of thousands of viewers. Players started flocking en masse towards The Cycle: Frontier, which caused our servers to blow up and forced us to urgently upscale our infrastructure. In case you’re wondering, that’s a very good problem to have," it added. "All in all, things were looking up for The Cycle: Frontier even though we still had a long road ahead of us."

Yager says cheaters drove players away from The Cycle

Despite hitting the ground running, Yager struggled to deal with a surge in cheaters during The Cycle's formative months, resulting in a "significant decrease in our player base." It then failed to kickstart the title again with the launch of Season 2, leaving it questioning whether the state of The Cycle at that time was actually representative of its initial vision.

"That’s why we announced the end of global mandatory wipes, along with the introduction of free loadout runs, loadout presets and changes to the early game experience, all in an effort to make the game more approachable," continued the studio.

"Just to be clear, this seemed to convince many players, and we saw an increase in our success metrics with the release of Season 3. Unfortunately it was still not enough to make The Cycle: Frontier financially viable."

Given the project's days are numbered, players will now be unable to spend money on The Cycle before the servers close. Yager is also removing bundles and Aurum packs from Steam and the Epic Games Store.

On the latter storefront, players will no longer be able to install the game from June 28, 2023, although those who already have The Cycle in their library will be able to continue playing until the game's servers are switched off.

Over on Steam, anybody who doesn't have the title in their libraries will still be able to install and play it before it's shuttered on September 27, 2023. Yager is also accelerating progression and handing out the premium version of Season 3's Fortuna Pass for free to help The Cycle's remaining players exit on a high.