Supervive isn't shutting down, but its player count is "taught"

Every now and then, someone truly innovates on a genre. There are a thousand League of Legends clones out there (I see you, Bang Bang), but to my mind, there's only one game that really took Riot's age-old MOBA formula and revolutionized it. That game is Supervive, an action-heavy, lightning-fast top-down brawler that shakes up the genre by adding verticality and the occasional high-speed train. I played it in various forms ahead of launch, and I once claimed that it would be the game that finally filled the LoL-shaped void in my heart. As my interest in Riot's behemoth hit an all-time low at the start of this year, Supervive looked primed to be the game that my partner and I would play all night, every night. Sadly, that hasn't been the case.

When it was first revealed, the hype around Supervive was electric. You had Tyler 'Tyler1' Steinkamp singing its praises, with Twitch titans like Marc 'Caedrel' Lamont taking to the Sky Realms and truly showcasing what the game could do. You had Clayton 'Captain Flowers' Raines and Isaac 'Azael' Cummings-Bentley commentating creator cups, which starred some of the purple site's biggest names. Coupled with a stellar reception, it seemed like Theorycraft was set to give Riot a run for its money when Supervive finally launched - it was positioning itself as one of 2025's biggest hits.

And, at a glance, Supervive still appears to be well-liked. 84% of almost 13,000 Steam reviews are in the green, with recent entries clocking in at 82%, or 'very positive.' It's a solid score for a multiplayer indie game in a world where something new seemingly appears every single day. The hard numbers, however, tell a different story. Having peaked at 47,913 players at its early access launch, Supervive's Steam count has been in freefall ever since. 1.0 reeled in a peak of just over 15k concurrents back in July, but in recent weeks, that number has failed to crest 1,000. While Theorycraft has been busy reworking some of the game's less-popular systems, including the much-maligned Armory, some have expressed concerns about its future. Is Supervive dead? Is it shutting down? I ask executive producer Jessica 'Safelocked' Nam those exact questions.

"I think it's really hard right now," she laments. "We came out swinging with the open beta, and we were really honored and excited by the fact there was so much interest in Supervive. People see the thing that we're trying to make." Reminiscing about her time both playing and developing League of Legends, she recalls that "there were things I was craving and that I saw players wanting, and it boiled down to more agency, more freedom in play style, more visceral combat. We were like 'this is a way we could differentiate and give you some of the most satisfying endgame teamfights that you could possibly experience.' I think people saw that and thought, 'gosh, this is awesome,' but then it's like, in this day and age, is that enough? We've had a lot of conversations about that, and I think for forever games, it's not enough.

"You want to have that eventfulness, you want to feel like the game is alive, you want your friends to be playing it," she continues. "There's got to be new content, there's progression, there's a sense that when I come back, there's something for me to engage in. But we're also a small company - how do we address those needs in our forever game? For a deep, competitive game, you really want to be rewarded for your time investment - you want to get that reciprocal 'hey, it was worth it.' I think that, as an indie startup, we're grappling with the idea of 'how do we face that challenge and rise to that occasion?'

"Right now, we're wrestling with it," she says. "When we were reflecting on it all, we [realized] we were trying to address too many needs at once; we were trying to broaden it so much that we were stretching ourselves too thin, from both a bandwidth and direction perspective. Supervive is a competitive game, but it also has aspects of exploration. We're trying to simultaneously serve the competitive player base and those that are more casual. When we were trying to address the needs of these two groups - and there's obviously a spectrum of interest, they're not totally separate - we found that the direction was a bit muddy to us, and I think it felt muddy to players. Solving that problem became the most important thing for us - instead of stretching ourselves too thin, what if we hard-committed to a point of view and served one core part of the player base? Would we take a bet on that? That could be a risk, and is that risk worth taking? I really wrestle with that."

It certainly does feel like a risk, especially when the game's player count has continued to dwindle. Cutting out some features to refocus on a specific player type may, in the long run, lure new folks in, but drastic changes could spark tension among those still invested. I ask Nam for her perspective on Supervive's current player count and the viability of maintaining the game going forward.

"I think it's important for [the player count] to be higher than it is right now," she says. "It varies from game to game, but the shape of this game necessitates a higher player count. Practically speaking, it's a battle royale - it has multiple teams, high player count sessions, then there's matchmaking involved. When you couple all of those things together, it creates a higher requirement for a player base, so matches are really competitive, and you're running into players that are around your skill level. There is a minimum, but it's fuzzy. I'd say right now, it's a little taught to keep it up right now.

"There's obviously things you can do to the matchmaking algorithm, but there's a limit - at some point the math stops mathing. We've been cognizant of that, too. We've asked 'what are the endemic problems that the battle royale faces?' Are players asking 'what could I have done better?' and we think that, to a degree, players aren't asking that question enough - they're sweating and they're overwhelmed. We believe that there's opportunity to do better there so that that question comes naturally, and the more that happens, we believe the game will be more retentive, sticky, and exciting. Then, no matter where it is right now, can we build off of that to steadily grow over time? As long as we can see where we could go, it's worth the investment. If we didn't have ideas, it'd maybe be a different story, but there's some scaffolding there; we can see how we could stair-step our way up.

"We are not shutting down," she assures me. "I do think there's the directional shift I mentioned earlier - can we focus every inch of our attention on making the game more competitive for more players - that wasn't what we were doing before, and that is going to become true. It's a North Star for us."

But the gaming sphere, at the moment, is perhaps the most chaotic it's ever been. In over six years in editorial, I've seen trends come and go, but it feels like every day brings something new. I'd argue that extends outside of just videogames, with endless new things constantly being served to us across both other entertainment mediums and social media. How does an indie game like Supervive, with rave reviews and a dedicated player base, survive the onslaught of 'newness' when even the mighty Hollow Knight Silksong already feels like yesterday's news?

"It's a very unpredictable environment," Nam muses. "The amount of investment into a 'forever game' is quite a lot. Being able to feel good about your choice to invest in that game matters more than ever. When I think about it from the perspective of a younger player that's choosing their next game, looking out there at all of the options of what [they] can possibly play - that has changed drastically. It's happening every day, every minute. I feel like that's true about all of entertainment right now. I've heard this constantly in the anime industry. When you're faced with that much choice, you want your choice to feel good, and you're reading, researching, getting flooded with TikToks; you're seeing your social feeds populated with whatever, and then on top of it, there's the influencer layer. How do you even possibly choose? I think that's probably the biggest difference.

"Any competitive forever game is faced with that reality; there are new inputs being shoved into your brain constantly. Silksong came out just a couple of weeks ago [at the time of this interview], before that Donkey Kong, before that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, before that Blue Prince. No one's even talking about them anymore, and they're great games! I do think there's this desire and anxiety that hits people where they're like 'I've got to try and stay afloat and keep track of this, otherwise I don't really know [about the topic].'

"I think that's a big, big truth about deep competitive games and what they're facing; I hear it from my other industry friends all the time. Games that they weren't worried about before worry them now because there's always something new that deserves attention. How do you combat that? That's our challenge to figure out. I think, instead of being the fresh new thing every day - I don't think any form of entertainment can realistically do that - it's about going back to your niche and focusing on the people who really, really love and support the game."

So given that Supervive is very much alive and kicking, what comes next? There is, of course, the aforementioned directional pivot, but what about new content? "We are going to have a new season with a new Hunter that we're very excited about. There are new items to explore, a new battle pass, and new cosmetics. We're also interested in exploring new prototypes for ways that more players can be competitive," she tells me, grinning. "I'm struggling because I'm trying to draw the line [of what I can tell you], but we're excited to keep going on this journey." And honestly? I'm excited, too.