Hi-Rez Studios announces shutdown of Realm Royale: Reforged and Divine Knockout

Publisher Hi-Rez Studios has confirmed that two of the company’s free-to-play multiplayer titles, Realm Royale: Reforged and Divine Knockout are having their servers shut down in the next few months. This comes only a few weeks after the company announced an unspecified number of layoffs, with the stated reason being a consolidation of focus behind the recently-released Smite 2.

In two nearly identically-worded announcements on their respective Steam Store pages, the developers of Realm Royale: Reforged and Divine Knockout have announced that their games “will be sunset and the servers shut down on February 17, 2025 12:00 PM EDT. Following this date, the game will be removed from digital storefronts and you will no longer be able to purchase it and any related content such as DLC“.

Mind you, neither of these Hi-Rez-published games were performing especially well as of late. Realm Royale: Reforged has been averaging only a few hundred concurrent players for the last few months, according to SteamDB. Divine Knockout’s situation is even worse, with the game having averaged only a few dozen concurrent players for most of its lifetime. As such, even without Hi-Rez’s cost-cutting focus at the moment, both games seemed to be struggling to attract an active-enough playerbase to keep them alive.

That being said, the situation for the rest of Hi-Rez’s catalogue isn’t that much better. Smite 2, the game behind which the publisher is consolidating most of its resources, still has a “mixed” review average on Steam. What’s more, going back to SteamDB, the first game has a 24-hour peak player count of 6,802 at time of writing versus Smite 2’s 1,832, suggesting players are sticking with Smite 2’s predecessor instead of moving on to the sequel. With Smite 2 only having released in August of this year, there is naturally plenty of time to turn things around. However, the momentum doesn’t seem to be in Hi-Rez’s favour considering the current reception to Smite 2. It will remain to be seen how things will pan out.

For players of Divine Knockout and Realm Royale: Reforged, you have until February 17th 2025 to enjoy them. After that date, the servers will go offline and they will be removed from online storefronts, effectively making them unplayable anymore.