Techland’s founder and CEO, Paweł Marchewka, recently hosted a Discord AMA with fans of the company’s parkour-fueled zombie series, during which he announced the end of support for Dying Light: The Beast. The game landed last year as a standalone release, despite its original positioning as an expansion for Dying Light 2.
The Beast recently got the Restored Land update, which allowed players to clear out the zombies across the map and bring civilization back to the world. But now support is ending for The Beast, which Techland never planned as a game the company would support long term.
Dying Light: The Beast is a complete game, and that’s how players should approach it — much like Dying Light 1 is today,” Marchewka said, via Insider Gaming. “We’re not planning substantial new content for it.”
Marchewka went on to say that The Beast was planned as a “complete, self-contained game from the start.” The company never made a commitment to it, but still put out substantial free updates over the past year, including Restored Land, new weapons, and more.
“The five-year support model hasn’t worked as well for us as we hoped,” Marchewka continued. “We’re an AAA studio. With each new game, we want to deliver an unforgettable experience and push the boundaries of what games can do.”
The CEO went on to explain how supporting multiple games can impact development on the studio’s next release. “Supporting existing games for years with smaller teams can seriously disrupt work on new projects,” he said.
“At the same time, players expect frequent, substantial, high-quality updates — sometimes several times a month, and usually for free. With limited resources, we can end up disrupting production and still disappointing players.”
The team will continue to support Dying Light 2, which still has a larger team working on updates than Dying Light ever had. Techland’s next game was supposed to be its fantasy RPG project, but that was canceled last year.
The Xbox One and PS4 versions of The Beast were also canceled earlier this year. What Techland is working on next remains a mystery for now.