TLM Partners announced last week that the long running free-to-play World War II strategic shooter, Heroes & Generals, will be shutting down on May 25th at 11:59pm UTC (7:59pm EST). The ambitious title has been on Steam since 2016 and came to the Epic Games Store in 2020 but hasn’t been profitable “for a very long time” according to one of the developers.
In hopes of updating the aging game tech the team launched a Kickstarter campaign for Heroes and Generals 2: The Next War in February, seeking $2 million in funding for the follow-up. Although the timing is conspicuous, the decision to shut down the original Heroes & Generals is reportedly not tied to what appears will be a vastly under-funded campaign when it ends this Friday.
That explains the incongruous wording of the team’s announcement below, promising in-game rewards for Kickstarter backers in a game that is on the eve of being shut down.
DEAR COMMUNITY!
In today’s update we have added Backer Helmets for everyone who has pledged $5 or more on our HnG 2 Kickstarter. Regardless of the outcome, thank you for believing in HnG 2! All qualified backers will receive a message on Kickstarter with their reward within 24 hours.And now for the big news…the official shut down of the Heroes and Generals WW2 servers will be on Thursday, 25th of May 2023 at 11:59PM UTC
With the impending shut down of the servers, we disabled the ability to purchase Gold Packs so anyone with gold to spare can make their final purchases effective immediately.
A RESPECTFUL SEND OFF
We want to give everyone, old and new, a chance to go crazy with all the guns, items and vehicles HnG 1 has to offer. The only way to give a proper farewell is through a gold rush!On May 2nd 2023 ~10AM CEST all player accounts will have UNLIMITED gold until the servers shutdown.
During the ‘Gold Rush’ each account will have a limit to the maximum number of transaction requests that can be sent to the server per day and a limit to the maximum total number of Assault Teams that can be deployed or queued for deployment in a War. This is done to keep the servers stable and the RTS balance in check.
KICKSTARTER MILESTONE
Steam Announcement – April 03, 2023
In other news we are getting closer to 1000 backers on Kickstarter! We’d like to give a heartfelt thank you for all the support and a special thanks to everyone who shared our Kickstarter campaign and the ones who made their pledge for Heroes and Generals 2! MAKE YOUR PLEDGE AND GET THE LATEST KICKSTARTER NEWS HERE: https://qrco.de/thenextwar
The immediate future doesn’t seem too certain for the Heroes & Generals franchise but the team is still trying to find a way forward even without the Kickstarter campaign. Developer TLM.Hades recently replied to criticisms on the game’s Steam forums stating that “we are still going to see if we can do it in a different manner, most likely not straight away but a few years in the future. I hope that at some point we will see H&G 2, it’s also possible this is indeed just the end”.
I’ve added the May 25th date to the Watch List calendar and we’ll have a page up on the site later. Thanks again to Serrated-banner9 for submitting the news.