Redhill Games announced on October 19th that their free-to-play, team-based shooter, Nine to Five, would be removed from Steam later that same day but that online play would remain accessible until January 18th, 2023. After that date owners will still be able to download and launch the game from their Steam library but it’s unclear if any modes or content will be playable. The team’s announcement follows:
We have important news regarding the future of Nine to Five we would like to share with you.
After careful consideration and deliberation, we have made a difficult decision to end the development of Nine to Five. This means there will be no further updates or patches, and the servers will remain open until January 18, 2023.
We realize that many people are passionate about Nine to Five and wish to see the game develop, grow, and succeed. However, we cannot give you regular updates, new content, and more people to play with, so our most difficult decision is also for the community — we want to be honest and respect your trust.
From this moment onwards, we will turn our attention away from developing our own titles and focus on working with other game developers on co-developing projects.
We understand that many of you will be disappointed and have a lot of questions regarding the future of Redhill Games, updates, and refunds, we hope that this FAQ will answer some of them.
In the time leading up to the shutdown, we will naturally disable in-game purchases and make all premium skins and bundles free.
We want to emphasize how grateful we are to you, our community. Our close-knit relationship and connection are very special to us. Your enthusiasm, patience, and support for our game have been overwhelming — we could not have gotten this far without you.
Thank you.
Redhill Games team, October 19, 2022
In Early Access since 2020, the game officially launched just back in May but according to SteamDB chart data it wasn’t enough to kickstart a thriving community of players. Thanks to Wakayama_PT for pointing out the news. I’ve added the date to the Watch List calendar and will have a page up on the site later.