The Walking Dead: Betrayal, set in the popular The Walking Dead zombie apocalypse universe, has been announced to cease development. The game will be delisted from Steam, just three months after it entered early access.
In a statement, publisher Skybound Games revealed it had decided to pull The Walking Dead: Betrayal from Steam, citing that the game hasn’t managed to draw enough players long-term for them to continue support. The game will be delisted on December 11 this year, with the game’s servers shortly following suit on December 15.
Thankfully, Skybound Games also confirmed that all players who purchased the game would be eligible for a full refund, regardless of their playing time.
Despite seeking to merge the classic survival game gameplay with an element of social deduction, The Walking Dead Betrayal failed to resonate with players on the scale that Skybound had intended. Additionally, the game received mixed reviews from critics on launch, further harming its chances at long-term success.
This impact was evidently felt both at publisher Skybound Games and developer Ocean Interactive, who stated that “despite the hard work put into the game, we were not able to find a path to build the spirited community of backstabbers we originally envisioned.” With the game having a total of 111 reviews on Steam, with an aggregate "Mixed" rating, it's clear that The Walking Dead: Betrayal performed far worse than Skybound could have anticipated.
The Walking Dead: Betrayal is far from the first The Walking Dead game to be badly received by players. Titles such as 2018's The Walking Dead from Overkill and 2023's The Walking Dead: Destinies from Flux both had an even worse reception than The Walking Dead Betrayal, as the hit comic and television series continually seems to translate poorly to video game media.
Nevertheless, in their statement, Skybound committed to bring further “[...] The Walking Dead experiences [to players] in the future, with the entertainment company seemingly undeterred by the poor performance of The Walking Dead: Betrayal. Fans of The Walking Dead franchise will have to wait and hope that Skybound's next offering can make more of an impact next time around.