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CCP will shut down DUST 514 in May after three years on PS3

While developer CCP is preparing to launch an exciting new game, it's also preparing to pull the plug on another.

Ozzie Mejia

February 3, 2016 4:30 PM

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Developer CCP is going to have an eventful couple of months with the upcoming arrival of EVE: Valkyrie as one of the launch titles for Oculus Rift. But with the dawn of a new day, a little night must fall. So while EVE Online rolls strong and EVE: Valkyrie is set to lift off, the studio is about to say goodbye to PlayStation 3 spin-off DUST 514.

CCP issued the following statement (via Gamasutra) earlier today:

"CCP's development team in Shanghai has been working on a prototype for a first-person shooter for PC with the goal of building a great FPS set in our sci-fi universe of New Eden (the universe in which EVE Online, DUST 514, EVE: Valkyrie, and Gunjack are set). Their experience is being utilized to build a new game from scratch using Unreal Engine 4 while harnessing all our learnings from DUST 514. This is in many ways an evolution of Project Legion, the concept we announced at EVE Fanfest 2014, but without the limitations of technical debt and development paths we quickly discovered in that effort that could never serve as a future-proof technology base for a full production game. This new project is still in an early phase of production, and we feel like we’re on the right track and plan to give an update at EVE Fanfest on April 21st as a part of the free livestream of the event. Since this new game will be different from DUST 514 (although keeping many of its great parts), we will provide tiered recognition rewards to our loyal DUST customers, details to be announced.

"We are very proud of what we've learned and accomplished with DUST 514 on PlayStation 3 over the past three years and it is an honor to be a part of such a dedicated community. We consider DUST 514 one of the best free-to-play offerings on the platform, but the years have caught up with us. It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that DUST 514 will be shutting down on May 30th, 2016. We therefore will not be releasing the 1.3 update as we had planned. Players will continue to be able to play for free on our servers until then, but all further PSN packs and purchases have been removed and disabled from the in-game marketplace and the PlayStation Store. Players with existing Aurum will be able to continue to purchase items from the in-game marketplace.

DUST 514 first launched back in 2013, taking a bold risk of launching an involved shooter with only months remaining in the PS3's life cycle. For its part, Sony expedited the submissions process to allow for more frequent updates, but it appears that it ultimately could not sustain itself, despite a strong near-three year life cycle.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?