Supervive, League of Legends' most promising competitor, is shutting down next year

We've all heard the phrase 'World of Warcraft killer.' Countless MMOs have come and gone, but Blizzard's iconic fantasy adventure still sits at the top of the tier list, even if there's a little more competition these days. In recent years we've seen the arrival of various 'League of Legends killers,' with Valve's noir-style MOBA shooter Deadlock touted as the one that'll finally wipe Riot off the map. Supervive was another one of those 'LoL killers,' blending the high-octane brawling of fighting games with League's top-down action and Apex's drop mechanics. I spoke to executive producer Jess 'Safelocked' Nam about the game a few months ago, where she admitted its player count was "taught." Now, Theorycraft has confirmed that Supervive is shutting down.

Despite having a team of Riot, Blizzard, and Halo veterans behind it (including Joe Tung, who you likely remember from his time at Bungie, or as one of League of Legends' executive vice presidents), Supervive failed to stick the 1.0 landing. While its beta saw it take over everyone's X timeline, helped along by a strong creator marketing campaign that saw the likes of Tyler 'Tyler1' Steinkamp and Marc 'Caedrel' Lamont take to the The Breach, its player count has been in freefall ever since. At the time of writing, its concurrent Steam peak sits around the 380 mark, with the odd 560 spike.

There are a few reasons for this. First and foremost is the now-removed Armory system, which effectively gacha-fied progression by distributing essential core items randomly. While this was scrapped relatively recently, it feels like it was too little too late. Then, there's just the general multiplayer fatigue. In a world where Battlefield 6, Arc Raiders, and Black Ops 7 all dropped at once; Dota 2 has a new hero; and League of Legends is ramping up for 2026, it's hard to cut through the noise.

Concerns about the game shuttering have been raised before on Reddit, and when I interviewed Nam back in October she was resolute that the game did have a future. Just two months on, however, Theorycraft has confirmed that Supervive will shutter next year, with the servers going down for good.

In a new Fireside Chat video, Nam confirms that Theorycraft is "sunsetting Supervive early next year. This wasn't an easy decision for us to make. We know Supervive has a core community who really loves what it has to offer, and our team loves working on it, too.

"As time has gone on, it's become clear that our changes haven't been effective enough, and bringing in new players has only gotten harder," she continues. "Although we've seen a huge number of people download and try Supervive, most of them move on after their initial time with the game. Supervive is an ambitious and expensive game to support, so as player counts have dropped we've [been] faced with the difficult reality that maintaining the game isn't sustainable for us."

"We're still shipping patch 2.04 this week [the week commencing December 15, 2025], which includes our newest prototype game mode, Prisma Party. It'll also include our final bundle of completed skins, which will be gifted to everyone for free. 2.04 will be our last planned patch before Supervive live service closes at the end of February. If you feel like you didn't get your value out of any recent purchase, you can contact player support to request a refund of items bought within the past three months.

"Some of you might be wondering what this means for Theorycraft," she says. "This experience has really made us think about the kinds of games we want to make going forward. We're proud of launching and supporting a global live service game with such a small team, but there are also so many areas where we fell short, tried to do too much, or lost sight of the bigger picture. We want to take those lessons to heart as we move forward.

"Or, said another way, we're pretty sure our next game is going to look pretty different from Supervive. Our goal is to forge a new direction for Theorycraft; one aimed at delivering high-quality, sharply focused games that live more squarely in the space between indie and triple-A. This isn't a call to follow us on that journey - in fact, we're likely to go dark for some time as we spin up something new. But, with any luck, when you see us again we'll look quite different."

"We hope you'll join us on The Breach during these last few months of Supervive," Nam says. " There's still dunks to be had, storms to outrun, and Ws to earn."

Supervive live service will end on Wednesday February 25, 2026, with the servers going offline and the game being delisted from Steam. This means you will no longer be able to play Supervive. The game's last patch, 2.04, goes live today, Wednesday December 17, at 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm GMT / 5pm CEST.

I've had a lot of fun with Supervive, but in many ways it has felt like the writing was on the wall. While I'm excited to see what Theorycraft does next - I love its style and its ambition - I'm sad to see Supervive go, especially when its reviews are so high and its community is so vibrant. As a longtime fan and Supervive cheerleader, I wish Theorycraft all the best.