Wargaming, the team behind World of Tanks, launched a new free-to-play shooter called STEEL HUNTERS in April 2025. But after only three months, they’ve decided to shut it down. That’s right. Even though the game was still in Early Access, it’s already been canceled.
STEEL HUNTERS was a PvPvE shooter with futuristic mech battles. In this game, players could level up their Hunter and upgrade their arsenal to turn rivals into scrap. They could choose their playstyle and combat tactics against 5 other duo teams.
Each Hunter was meant to favor a distinct playstyle and have a unique progression system. This would make them a true menace in battle. Players would collect boosters and gear to gain an advantage in combat against their rivals.
From the looks of it, the game’s launch wasn’t that great. According to SteamDB, it had a peak of 4.4K concurrent players. In the last 24 hours, it had a peak of 97 players. So, for a multiplayer game, this is a dead game. So, in a way, I’m not really surprised it got canceled.
The game currently has Mixed reviews on Steam. While its concept sounded cool, it appears the actual game did not live up to players’ expectations. Not only that, but Wargaming did not do much to improve things. Or at least that’s what a lot of players claim.
Wargaming claimed that the servers will stay live for 90 days. This means that the game will no longer be playable on October 8th, when the servers will shut down. In the coming weeks the devs will roll out custom game support. This will allow you to play with your friends, set up community matches, and create some final memories together. Plus, the devs will unlock all Hunters for you to try.
So, another one bites the dust. At least this time, it’s just a free-to-play (F2P) game. And like I always say — there’s absolutely no reason to spend money in a F2P game. If the devs made it super grindy on purpose, just skip it and find something better. You should never pay to win in a F2P game!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I guess kids did not fall for this piece of trash game?
Yeah, the kids didn't fall for this piece of trash. There are like +10,000 other piece of trashes like it on Steam for these kiddies to fall for them though.
That's tough. These extraction shooter genre really blowing up but I guess this one didnt have enough gas. I guess just like the BR boom there have to be these corpses too.
They listened to the wrong people and instead of balancing the game to get the players back, they decided to open the matchmaking que to all levels. Open the flood gate sin order to boost player count/base. That is recipe for disaster. Before they made that move i once waited 24 minutes in order to match make.
That’s understandable then. Sad to see an interesting Mech title get the boot like this.
Ah too bad this one actually looked a bit cool
it got that Transfromers vibe.. shame its cancelled. I love mech / transformer sci fi games.
What could've been a fun Single Player game like armored core & titanfall2…ended up as another worthless multiplayer scrap. I wonder how much more money, talent & art will be wasted in this pointless pursuit of multiplayer greed in industry.
The end product would likely been – 99% p2w microtransactions and 1% like most "free to pay" games especially from Wargaming as of late. Know plenty of peeps who used to play tanks or warships, but they all left as the "games" became less and less games and more and more a launcher of "insert credit-card please".
IE looks like not much of value was lost unless you like to become better at being a whale. Shame looked like a pretty interesting concept on paper thoo
They didn't listen to the playerbase. Had one of the hunters basically became a boss fight every encounter because they have this m*fo so many healing abilities. Also, instead of fixing the problems the instead opened up the matchmaking to every level of player all at once. That's a disaster, because all you got matched with was noobs that have no idea what they are doing against veteran players that teamed up.
These people did everything BUT what they were suppose to do. Game was an original, that didn't even get a chance. Not to mention their discord was toxic AF! Filled with elitist that claim they know more than you because they assume that you've never played before, when I've been there since the damn beginning. Those are your fools the developers listed to. I warned them, that this would all blow up in their faces.
the worst part is don't invest in online games, but this one has that transformer look that I liked. So I went against my better judgement and now it was all for NOTHING! 🤬