Rogue Company Is Going To Be Unplayable Forever Very Soon
The free-to-play shooter Rogue Company is being removed from Nintendo's eShop.
Rogue Company, a free-to-play hero shooter game that launched in July 2020 in Early Access, is going to become unplayable very soon. We would attribute this to the video game recession and the fact that the industry’s in shambles, causing a massive number of video game shutdowns, but that isn’t the case. This specific case is tied to the Nintendo Switch version of the game, which is apparently being shut down by the game’s developer and publisher after failing to meet their quality standards.
According to ComicBook.com, the Nintendo Switch version of Rogue Company is being removed from Nintendo’s eShop, and the developers will pull the plug on the game’s life support systems, rendering it unplayable on June 20, 2023. The official statement reads that the developer has concluded, after careful consideration, that the game doesn’t meet its quality standards on Nintendo Switch and has thus decided to end support for the aforementioned title. If you have ever wondered what cutting costs sounds like, this is how.
First Watch Games and Hi-Rez Studios, Rogue Company’s respective developers and publishers, said that significant technical and process challenges prevent them from fully supporting the game on the Nintendo Switch platform. Admittedly, this isn’t the first time this record-breaking console has been associated with tough development processes or lack of technical specs that would allow easier patch implementation—Pokemon Scarlet & Violet fans have also raised concerns about the games’ lacking performance due to Switch’s aging hardware.
Live-service game shutdowns are always a sad sight, especially when you factor in the time and money spent on a title that’s now effectively a proverbial paperweight when it comes to utility. This is particularly true when developers decide to needlessly make the game into a live-service game like it’s the case with the upcoming Suicide Squad. Luckily, this isn’t the case with Rogue Company; Hi-Rez is encouraging players to use the Hi-Rez cross-progression service to transfer their progress from Switch to some other console.
Yes, Rogue Company will remain fully playable and operable on other platforms it released on, so you can use the Hi-Rez service to transfer your progress and preserve your time/money investment. However, we’re not aware of any limitation to this progress transfer, or lack thereof, so we can’t actually comment on its reliability. According to Hi-Rez, the service offers a full content and statistics transfer from Switch to PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms, so gamers can continue their progress on said platforms unhindered.
Rogue Company launched on Switch in 2020 in Early Access before going free-to-play in October of the same year with an open-beta, before finally receiving an official release in May 2022. Considering that all transactions on the Switch version have been disabled and that the game was removed from the eShop, Rogue Company is currently available only on the aforementioned platforms, with plans for a mobile port—which is apparently a booming market, considering that even Sega is investing into mobile gaming development, as evident by the company’s acquisition of Angry Birds.
