PUBG: Blindspot, the top-down tactical shooter developed by Krafton’s ARC team, will be removed from Steam on Monday, March 30 at 5:00 AM EDT. This decision comes after 53 days of early access for BLINDSPOT, one of the shortest lifespans ever recorded on Steam for a title backed by a major publisher. Krafton cites the team’s inability to maintain the desired level of experience as the reason for the closure.
Developer Sequoia Yang released a statement on Steam explaining the reasons behind this decision. The ARC team explored various avenues to improve the gaming experience and evolve the title in the weeks following its launch, but concluded they could not sustain the initial experience envisioned for early access. Yang confirmed that the team would remain in place and work on Blindspot would guide future developments, indicating that the studio is not dissolving.
Blindspot entered early access on February 5, marking a structural departure from PUBG’s battle royale format. Blindspot offers five-versus-five matches with a top-down view on partially destructible maps. One team plants and activates a bomb while the other tries to eliminate the opposing team before that. Krafton presents it as a tactical and intense shooter game, comparable to Rainbow Six Siege, targeting a different market segment than PUBG’s large-scale battles.
The low player numbers reflect the limited market share the game has gained. SteamDB recorded a peak of 3,251 simultaneous players, reached around the launch and steadily declining afterward. The peak of simultaneous players in the 24 hours preceding the closure announcement was 184. There is no console version to complement these figures, and the game was exclusively released on Steam.
I played Blindspot a few days after its February release and found the game sluggish compared to other top-down tactical shooter games: the controls were heavier than expected for the genre, the art direction was unremarkable, and the connection to PUBG did not translate to anything truly original in-game. More often boring than exciting.
In the current market of multiplayer shooter games, a title struggling to retain players in its early weeks rarely manages to reverse the trend. The peak of 3,251 players reached by Blindspot at release was too low for a service game to function, and the steady decline observed in the weeks following its launch left ARC Team with very limited room to maneuver.
Blindspot’s closure ranks it alongside Highguard as the biggest flop of the year for an online service – among the most brutal closures of a major publisher this year. Both titles disappeared within the first two months, with Blindspot lasting just a little longer.
I believe the execution failed to capitalize on a promising concept: a five-versus-five bomb planting game in destructible environments, with a top-down view, is a proven format that has found its audience. Blindspot failed to exploit it to a competitive level. The game is free to download on Steam until the server shutdown on March 30 at 5 AM EDT.
