The Culling 
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The Culling rises from the dead a second time with new pay-per-play monetisation modelMay 12, 2020 - EurogamerBeleaguered battle royale game The Culling has risen from the dead once more - despite apparently being canned for good last March - this time sporting a monetisation model that will require users to pay for the matches they want to play. The Culling, a survival-themed last-man-standing affair from developer Xaviant, launched on PC and Xbox in October 2017 following a period of early access. Its distinctive take on the battle royale formula - incorporating scavenging, crafting, and trap-making - immediately earned it fans, but its post-launch fortunes were short-lived and a rapidly dwindling player base (caused in no small part by the meteoric rise of PUBG) saw Xaviant ending support mere months later. Six months after that, Xaviant surprised dropped The Culling 2 on the world, and immediately felt the full force of a backlash from fans upset the developer had turned its attention to a sequel a little over nine months after its predecessor left Steam early access. Less that 48 hours after launch - which, in another case of unfortunate timing, coincided with the arrival of Fortnite's fifth season - The Culling 2's active userbase had plummeted to single digits. Read more The Culling appears to finally be deadMar 19, 2019 - EurogamerIt's the game that, up until now, could never quite die: but this time The Culling is gone for real, as developer Xaviant has said the game will close its doors in May. In a post on The Culling's website, director of operations Josh Van Veld explained the time had come to pull the plug. "When we launched the Origins update and made the game free to play, our hope was that the revenue generated from in-app purchases would be enough to sustain our team and support ongoing development. Read more Battle royale game The Culling: Origins is closing in MayMar 18, 2019 - PC GamerThe Culling: Origins, the free-to-play do-over of The Culling that went live in September 2018, will be closed in May. Developer Xaviant said in a farewell message that it had hoped in-app purchased would generate enough revenue to support the battle royale game, but it hasn't worked out. Xaviant decided to make The Culling free to play after the release of The Culling 2 in July 2018 went disastrously wrong. Players were unhappy with the state of the game, which deviated dramatically from the original, and were also angry that Xaviant halted development of The Culling just a couple of months after it went into full release so it could work on the sequel. The backlash was so intense that the studio elected to pull the plug on The Culling 2 just a few weeks after releasing it and turn its attention back to the first game instead. "When we launched the Origins update and made the game free to play, our hope was that the revenue generated from in-app purchases would be enough to sustain our team and support ongoing development, but unfortunately that was not the case," director of operations Josh Van Veld wrote. "Even with thousands of active daily users, the revenue was only a fraction of what our dev team required to continue daily operations. As a result, we’ve been forced to reduce our team size, which renders us unable to provide ongoing support and updates that would allow the game to grow and thrive." The Culling servers will go offline on May 15. Offline modes will remain playable after that, but online play and related features will not—and since it's an online game, that's pretty much the end of it. The Steam store page, with options to purchase Starter and Founder Packs, is still up but will be taken down "as soon as possible," and in-app purchases will also be disabled. Van Veld offered a sliver of hope for die-hard fans that the game could continue to operate under the care and control of someone else by inviting other studios interested in "exploring the game's potential" to contact Xaviant about a takeover. "We think that with the proper resources and know-how in the free to play world, the right group could make great things happen," he wrote. It's not how Xaviant itself will be affected. I've reached out to the studio for more information and will update if I receive a reply. The Culling shutting down servers on May 15thMar 18, 2019 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunDespite being one of the first on the battle royale block, even going free-to-play hasn’t been enough to save The Culling. Developers Xaviant have announced that the lights go out on their dystopian game show-themed survival shooter on May 15th. It’s been a rough year for the studio, with The Culling 2 announced, released and shut down due to lack of player interest within a three month span. They were hoping to re-launch the original game as free-to-play and have future development supported through in-app purchases. Sadly, it just didn’t work out that way. (more…) Have You Played The Culling?Mar 12, 2019 - Rock, Paper, Shotgun Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. It’s pleasing to see gas traps appearing in Apex Legends, courtesy of token toxic male Caustic. But let us lower our heads and observe a moment of silence for the fallen progenitor of such useful and deadly battle royale flatulence. That’s right, The Culling. (more…) Podcast: A young person explains battle royale to usJan 24, 2019 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunBattle royale games. For a long time the RPS treehouse was unable to comprehend these chaotic, destructive influences on society. Shooters, yes, we understand. Survival games, we get it. But 100-person death marches in a shrinking zone of hate? What s so good about that? Well, this week we ve got a young person* to help us decipher this most murderous of riddles. (more…) Patch Notes: Bot StuffOct 24, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/11801602/03de5f706e7195f6b0b6bc1652184d3857738f82.png Greetings contestants! Last time we spoke we were beginning what we thought was a short road to Xbox Certification. A few weeks later, it appears that road might’ve been a bit longer than our GPS led us to believe. In retrospect, using Mapquest in 2018 was probably not the best choice. Jokes aside, we’re still in the midst of the certification tornado. Standing squarely in the center, it’s difficult to say exactly when the Xbox One version will be given the green light, but we’re hopeful that it’ll be sooner than later. Though this process can be somewhat nebulous, we’ll continue to keep you updated whenever anything of note changes or if any setbacks occur. While the Xbox One version is still our priority, we know that the current patch on PC has gotten a little long in the teeth. Even though it’s almost Halloween, it’s time to file those fangs down. Tomorrow a brand new patch will be delivered that reaches from gameplay to matchmaking and beyond. Servers will be down to deliver the patch tomorrow, October 25th, at 8AM Eastern Time for up to 4 hours. We know that many aspects of tomorrow’s update touch upon key issues within the community, and will usher in sever quality of life changes to improve the overall matchmaking experience. We want to thank you not only for your feedback but also for your patience as we work as hard as we can to bring Origins to everyone. Until next time, See you on the island Patch notes: For consistency, all items now apply a brief interrupt when they are thrown. Bots are used to fill open slots in online matches - Bot kills count towards XP and stats (including leaderboard kills) - Bots do not provide score bonuses for leaderboard score - Various improvements to bot behavior - Bots have been assigned customized names and outfits All hair cosmetics are now available to equip on male and female contestants Your most recently applied weapon skin is now previewed in your character’s hands on the main menu Your character can now be rotated on the main menu Chemist Perk now applies exclusively to MuscleMan Milk, X-plosive Runs, and Iron-4-Skin stims Fixed a bug where melee damage would not scale appropriately based on charge percentage, which resulted in partially charged hits dealing jab damage Fixed a bug where Weakness wound was not applying its status effect, set its duration to 12s to match other weapon wounds The hit reaction that plays when you are struck with a shove, jab, or charged attack (assuming this action does not result in a full stagger) no longer roots you in place, eliminating the ‘mini-stagger’ effect Store preview screen now displays a list of outfit contents Fixed a bug where region names were not consistent Fixed end of match scoreboard to allow all contestants’ names to fit Matchmaking system will now enforce bands - players will not be matchmade against other players with signifi...Dev Diary: MapquestOct 3, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings contestants! The air is crisp, the leaves are beginning to change, pumpkin spice is in our lattes, fall is officially upon us.Though the clocks are soon to be moving back, this change in season has us looking at the road ahead. Origins has been a passion project for us here at Xaviant and we’ve been moved by the kind words, well wishes and messages of support you’ve given us since its release. We know that The Culling is as special for many of you as it is for us and we’re thrilled to return to the island once again. As exciting as Origins is, it is just the first big step in what we hope is a much longer journey. As we enter a new season, today feels like as good a day as any to share some of our far-reaching plans, as well as deliver a state of the union as to what’s currently cooking at L’Studio Xaviant. Immediate Xbox One: Our focus is to launch The Culling: Origins on Xbox One. We’re currently in the thrall of the Xbox certification process which makes it difficult to pinpoint an exact date, but we think we are down to a matter of days, not weeks. We’re committed to delivering on our promise and bringing free-to-play to all contestants as quickly as possible. Server Stability: We’re strengthening our online infrastructure to be faster and more reliable. We’ve rolled out several fixes and improvements already and we will continue to implement new upgrades on a regular basis. Short-term In addition to launching Xbox One version of Origins, we are also hard at work on a new update that includes quality of life changes and improvements for all users. Mini-Stagger: You’ve made yourselves clear, it’s time for mini-stagger to go, and go, it shall. The removal of mini-stagger is in its final stages of internal testing and will be included (or is that excluded?) in the next update. Showdown: You made it clear that you’d like to see Showdown return. We intend to make some improvements to ensure that it communicates clearly and traps as many no-good teamers as possible. Enhanced Matchmaking: The Culling is a lot of fun when everyone in the match has a chance at a win. Our existing matchmaker prioritizes queue times and full matches over making sure you’re matched with players of a similar skill. Our new formula will be unwilling to match new players with veterans. - To bolster this system, bots will be used to fill out online matches in low-population situations. As such, bots are receiving a round of cosmetic and behavior improvements to ensure that they enhance, rather than hinder matches where they appear. Early Closure: In case a match is full of highly aggro contestants, you’ve asked that we keep the action moving quickly and shut the match down early. We’re working on a simple method to shave a few minutes when the conditions are right. Long-term This is it. The grand kahuna.The big potato. The spiciest chicken wing. This is The Culling 2018/2019 Roadmap. Below you will find a nifty graphic that highlighting our vision for the future. T...Dev Diary: Mini Stagger and Showdown and Early ClosureSep 25, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings Contestants! It’s been a very busy week here at studio Xav. We’re having a blast with Origins and we’re proud to say that many of you have reached out to share that you feel the same way. We’re doing our best to get as many new contestants onto the Island as possible and to spread the good news that is Origins. You may have heard that we have announced The Culling: Origins Island Invitational, a $25K streamer tournament coming up this weekend. We haven’t announced all of the participants yet, but you’ll be able to check them all out on Saturday, September 29th at 8pm ET / 5PM PT on Twitch. We’re super excited to showcase The Culling: Origins on a grand stage, but we’re also looking to get the game to a stage it has been on before and one that you’ve been asking about quite a bit: Xbox One. As of this moment we’re getting close to submitting the Xbox version to certification. Our target timeframe to get Origins to the Xbox is two weeks, just in time for October. Please keep in mind though that this process can be fluid, and while we’d like to share a concrete date, we simply cannot do that at this point. We hope to know more info in the coming week. On the gameplay front, you’ve been talking and we’ve been listening. We think the current live build is exactly what we wanted to achieve with the Origins launch - as close to Day 1 as makes sense. That means we’ve arrived at a point where we can carefully and methodically make some changes, specifically changes that you’re asking for. Before we go into those, we want to take a second to talk about the future. It’s the “anything can happen” atmosphere that only The Culling provides that makes the game unique. Chasing the mythical dragon that is perfect balance is not only resource-consuming, in a game like The Culling it’s nearly impossible. We’ve been down that road before, heck, you’ve been down that road with us. It’s not fun. Not for you, not for us and certainly not for new players. Rather than devoting a big chunk of time to obsessing over each weapon/item/perk/etc. being equal, we’d rather celebrate what The Culling is and look for ways to build the experience with new content and features. This doesn’t mean that we’re done making targeted changes to existing systems, what it does mean is that we don’t expect every aspect of the game to be perfectly balanced. Tweaking gameplay and emphasizing quality of life changes is important, but we want to see The Culling grow. We think deep down, you do too. Now, let’s get down to business. Here are a few topics you’ve been very vocal about: Mini-Stagger. In Day 1, if you were jabbed or shoved, your hit reaction animation briefly overruled your movement input, resulting in a short ‘mini-stagger’ where you could still rotate and fight but you could not move. We later removed this component, allowing you free movement, but we put it back into Origins for the sake of matching Day 1. We tend to agree with the feedback we’ve been hearing - it doesn’t ...Patch Preview - Scheduled for September 21, 2018Sep 20, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/11801602/03de5f706e7195f6b0b6bc1652184d3857738f82.png Greetings contestants! As we close in on a week of The Culling being free-to-play, we have our first post-Origins patch inbound. Rather than making sweeping changes this new patch is intended instead to get melee combat feeling even closer to Day 1, as well as to address some big quality of life issues and bugs. We’ll have more to announce about our longer-term roadmap, including when you can expect Origins on Xbox One, soon. Servers will be down Friday, September 20th at 8AM Eastern for up to 4 hours. Changes - Melee Combat Melee attack animation playback speed is no longer affected by weapon speed (to match Day 1 combat timings) Fix for hit reactions when Shoved not looking correct from some directions Fix for melee input queuing bug resulting in the ability to charge attacks while shoving Reduced melee input queuing window to reduce unwanted queued actions Shove animation duration now 0.8s to match Day 1 Shove range reduced from 2.0m to 1.75m to match attack range Striking a Shoving player now consistently applies a Stagger (this required special timing in Day 1) Dev comments: Please see our recent dev diaries, which explain these items in detail. All of these changes are intended to either get combat closer to Day 1 or address inconsistencies from Day 1 that muddied the experience. We will continue to follow community feedback regarding the melee combat systems. - Reduced spawn rate of firearms in Blue Crates and Red Crates Dev comments: We like seeing guns turn up in crates occasionally, but the drop rate was high enough that you usually saw several guns in many matches. The drop rate has been reduced by roughly two thirds. - Removed Dynamite, Impact Grenades from Green Crates Dev comments: You can still get explosive mines and remote explosives from green crates. This was something we talked about in a previous dev diary but didn’t implement. - Fix for aiming down the sights with a ranged weapon not providing an accuracy bonus Dev comments: This bug was introduced when we made some bow accuracy changes for Origins. We’ll be keeping an eye out for Bow accuracy feedback now that this issue is resolved. - We now hide crosshairs when aiming down the sights with ranged weapons Dev comments: This is not intended to affect ranged weapon balance, we felt that the crosshairs were a distraction when aiming down the sights. - Voice communication now uses push-to-talk (mapped to Left Alt by default) - Fixed several keyboard keys that could not be mapped - Added menu option to invert mouse Y axis - Fixed bug that allowed players to apply a second satchel to unlock 5th inventory slot - Fix for exploit based on recycling the Detonator for a Remote Explosive - Don’t show player count on main menu (the count was not accurate and didn’t account for players who were in matches) - Fix for bug where Sabre applied cripple wound even when Disab...Survey Says: Attack and Shove SpeedSep 19, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/11801602/173d24efdb5bc662be947e4dafa83e5cb34bd53e.jpg Greetings Contestants! Yesterday, we shared our findings related to shove spam becoming a “thing,” and took you down the rabbit hole explaining how we intend to make some small tweaks to help you escape the grasp of a nasty shove sandwich in duos. As it turns out, the rabbit hole goes quite a bit deeper. Some of you have noted that combat still feels a little off compared to Day 1. You’ve given us the feedback that fast weapons are too darn fast and that the meta is evolving into something generally spammier than it used to be. One intrepid community member even took the time to create a side-by-side video that illustrated some differences. As a result, we’ve taken a deeper dive and we’ve found a couple of likely suspects. In the Day 1 build a bug with the weapon speed system resulted in all weapons jabbing at the same rate (once every 0.67 seconds), regardless of their speed. The attack animation played faster for fast weapons, but was followed by a brief pause after the animation before you could take another action. With slow weapons, however, you could take another action before the attack animation completed, which felt so margarinely-smooth that you wouldn’t believe it’s not butter. In the Origins build, this bug is rectified, which means that you are able to take another action immediately after your jab is finished. For fast weapons, this means an action every 0.57 seconds. For slow weapons, every 0.8 seconds. These may seem like a matter of only tenths of seconds, but the net result is that fast weapons have a significant mechanical advantage in Origins vs. Day 1, and slow weapons are at a significant disadvantage. Furthermore, with a fast weapon you can engage in far spammier behavior than you could in Day 1. But wait, there’s more! We also took a closer look at Shove, and found that the Origins shove animations last 0.67 seconds (which matches the base jab time). In Day 1, the Shove duration was 0.8 seconds. Again, only about a tenth of a second, but it can make a big difference in terms of feel, risk, and spammability. So what are we going to do about it? Here’s the thing: This sucks and it represents a pair of major oversights on our part. We worked hard to deliver Origins to you in a timely manner and these deviations from Day 1 were not intentional. Moreover, they are definitely not in keeping with our commitment to preserve Day 1 combat. At the same time, a big motivator for sticking with Day 1 combat is to prevent players from having to re-learn combat because we keep making changes. Making changes now, as always, risks alienating players who like combat in Origins just the way it is. The only good answer, in our humble opinion, is to remain committed to Day 1 parity and fix these issues. Our plan is as follows: Weapon speed will no longer scale attack animation speed. This means all attack animations will be c...Survey Says: Shove StaggerSep 18, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/11801602/fbe894cf1c04d32c882fa50e93b9dd4de2ee5f5d.png Greetings Contestants! Thank you all for coming out en masse for the Origins launch! We’re happy with our initial results but we’re certainly not satisfied yet. We think there are plenty of potential contestants out there who don’t even know about The Culling or that it’s free-to-play. We’ve got some big plans to change that, so stay tuned. We also want to thank you for being so excellent about reporting issues and giving feedback. Origins was always intended as a fresh start and that means there is plenty of forward progress to be made. This means a new opportunity for us to put lessons learned into practice. First off, we want to address the issue of missing Tokens. We know that some number of users have not received the Tokens that are included as part of the Founder’s Pack. We are working on a fix to prevent this from happening. Once the fix has been implemented, we will go through all users to ensure they receive the Tokens they are entitled to. We apologize for the inconvenience. There are several other items we’ve been hearing about that we’re looking at. Among them are Push-to-Talk, Bow Accuracy, Teaming, and a handful of significant bugs and exploits. We intend to roll out a patch as soon as possible (hopefully before the end of the week) that addresses many of these. A NOTE ON DAY 1 SERVERS As we set about writing this diary, we found ourselves wanting to go back to the Day 1 Reference servers to do some research. We found that this was harder to do than we wanted because those servers required 8 players to start a match. Moving forward, you can start a match with as few as 2 players, so we encourage you to do what we did. Grab a friend and compare Day 1 with Origins for yourselves. SHOVE SPAM In this diary we want to drill down on one particularly hot topic — SHOVE SPAM. The situation that highlights this problem is when combat becomes a 2-on-1, where a team can permanently stun-lock a single player by doing nothing but shoving repeatedly. It’s worth noting that we did not intentionally make any changes to combat mechanics in Origins vs. Day 1 and we approached this problem assuming we may have missed something. As such, we’ve taken another close look at Day 1 side by side with Origins. Here’s what we’ve found: DAY 1: In this build, being shoved (as long as you’re not blocking) is a lot like taking a tiny jab. You take a small amount of damage and you play a brief (roughly 0.8 seconds) hit reaction animation, which also moves your character a short distance opposite the direction you were hit from. During this hit reaction, you are unable to move, but you are free to take other actions. If you are struck while shoving, you can receive a full stagger, although this can only happen during a small window. We also found that in Day 1, the range of shoves is nearly 15% larger than melee attacks. This allows a player to ex...The Culling returns in free-to-play formSep 16, 2018 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunGame show style battle royale The Culling has returned in free-to-play form, allowing players to take in the jungle sights, bludgeon one another to death, and ruminate on the dystopic reality TV they re making, all without paying for the privilege. (more…) The Culling: Origins' free-to-play relaunch is todaySep 14, 2018 - PC GamerThe Culling is going back to the beginning. With the battle royale’s sequel now officially shelved, developer Xaviant has returned to its predecessor; today it relaunches as The Culling: Origins. If you played the original back in its early access days, it might be familiar. “When The Culling originally launched in March of 2016, it had an exciting, ‘anything goes’ approach to battle royale that was eventually sanded down over the course of many updates,” says Xaviant. “Origins brings back that special mojo by returning to the game’s roots, incorporating the spirit of Day 1 combat, perks, airdrops and overall gameplay.” It’s a dramatic shift that’s also been accompanied by the move to free-to-play. That’s not the only difference, however; Origins has a new art direction, XP, levelling, leaderboards, new weapons and voice chat. And since it’s going free-to-play, of course it’s going to have some crates. Cull Crates are awarded when you level up and contain four cosmetic items or in-game currency. Credits can also be used to buy more of these crates. Crates (and premium items) can also be purchased with tokens that cost real cash, though they will also appear in crates occasionally. It’s doesn’t sound like a terrible implementation, and only DLC will be completely unattainable without dropping money. The DLC also won’t be gameplay-related; all of that will be free-to-play. If you owned the original, you’ll receive an ‘Original Gangster’ founder pack. Inside you’ll get some outfits, 1000 tokens, weapon skins, two Culling Cards and four Cull Crates. The pack will also be available as DLC that will cost the same as the pre-F2P version of The Culling. The Culling: Origins is due out on Steam today. The Culling: Origins Goes Free-to-Play September 14thSep 12, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/11801602/d347906cd65606926b8c2287f2b384829a8c55a8.jpg Greetings Contestants! Battle Royale is back. Not only is that the official tagline of The Culling: Origins, but it’s also very true, which makes it the best slogan of September 2018. With Origins right around the corner, we think it’s time to give you an overview of the update as well as answer some lingering questions. We’re in the relative calm before the storm of our relaunch, so it seems fitting to take a moment to speak from the heart. Two months ago, our studio felt like we’d crashed into the rocks. We were stuck and there was no clear path forward. We had to take a moment, take a breath, and think about how we’d steered our ship into such a predicament. After some real, serious soul-searching, we realized that there was no clear path forward unless we went back to right some wrongs in our past. The Culling is the game that put us on the map and presented us with some amazing opportunities. But you, the community, are the people who made that opportunity real. Somehow we lost sight of that, and we lost our way when we let you down. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/11801602/04ab843e18262b11747cbb70c5ff1401125173bd.jpg When we decided to return to our origins by returning to The Culling, we knew it was the right thing to do. We didn’t know if that choice would keep our studio alive, and to be honest, we still don’t know for sure. What we do know is that there was a tremendous outpouring of hope and support from the game’s most hardcore fans and from the community at large. Your hope is infectious and your positive messages put wind back in our sails. Admitting failure and choosing a path forward wasn’t easy, but once we started to put one foot in front of the other, plans fell naturally into place. Looking back, the last two months have been an utter joy. We’re a group of developers who love making games, and this Origins update has given us an opportunity to tackle a new challenge together. The stakes are incredibly high for us, but that makes the challenge even more exciting. Adding to our new sense of purpose is the fact that you have been with us each step of the way. We’re still not perfect and we have a lot of room to grow, but we did our best to share our plans and gather your input as we went. And from where we sit now, it feels like the process is working. The Culling, which started out as a great game, is better than ever with Origins. It’s one of the grandfathers of the Battle Royale genre, and even today it stands alone as a completely unique experience. The Culling is brutal. It’s in your face. It rewards patience, strategy, and smart decisions as much as mechanical skill. It’s now a game that’s confident in its own skin, a game that has been shaped by your influence. It’s a collaboration in the truest sense of the word. Whatever happens in the coming weeks and months, we are ...The Culling: Developer Diary 3 - Special AnnouncementSep 6, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsXaviant Director of Operations Josh Van Veld offers a special announcement on The Culling: Origins Watch hereThe Culling: Developer Video Diary 2Aug 23, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsXaviant Director of Operations Josh Van Veld delivers a development update for The Culling and shares when you might expect to be playing Origins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZqIzZUBpq4&feature=youtu.beSales Format ChangingAug 22, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsIn preparation for the Origins update and a shift to Free-to-Play we have taken The Culling (incl Day 1) off of sale on Steam. We want to offer a huge thank you to all of our founders for your support.Survey Says: Building a Better CullingAug 8, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsIf you haven’t heard, the team here at Xaviant is working on a big new update called The Culling: Origins. The goal of the update is to take the game back to its roots. The look and feel will be very close to the Day 1 version, but we’ll be keeping the bug fixes, improved art content, and performance optimizations that were solid steps forward. Along with this update, The Culling will also become free-to-play. We’ve been looking closely at the Day 1 Reference build and also reviewing all the changes we made made way back in the day. We know the game wasn’t perfect on Day 1, but we also recognize that on the whole, our changes took things in the wrong direction. As confident as we are in our abilities, we also need a process where we can make improvements and additions without jeopardizing what made the game so special in the first place. Some of those changes will be coming with the release of the Origins update, so we need to open up lines of communication right away. Right away as in right now. We don’t want any surprises and we feel it’s important to give all of you an opportunity to weigh in with your opinions and ideas. Let’s be real: Even with better communication, we’re bound to make mistakes. With that in mind, we want to assure you that when we do put a foot wrong, we’ll be listening to feedback and we won’t be too proud to roll back a change that isn’t working. Our goal with our Dev Diary posts leading to Origins is to cover the major aspects of the game. If we’re planning to make changes that deviate from Day 1, we’ll explain the problem we’re trying to solve and the plan we’ve put together. We’ll give you the opportunity to weigh in on each topic. Before we start tackling big topics, we want to outline our approach. These are some internal rules we’ve been making for ourselves: When it comes to the mechanics, rules, and timing of melee combat, you can’t change anything without forcing everyone to relearn the game. Leave Day 1 alone. Many systems were a lot more fun on Day 1. Only change what you have to. That includes Perks, Airdrops, Economy, Looting, and more. Sometimes small changes have a bigger impact than you expect, so be careful and don’t fix something that isn’t broken. The game features lots of highly lethal items, i.e. explosives, firearms, Stun Guns, etc. Finding a balance between high lethality (which can be a lot of fun) and easy accessibility (i.e. Stun Guns in cheap airdrops or Dynamite in Green Crates) is a tough proposition. Careful tuning is key. No dramatic changes. On Day 1, the look and feel of the game was more sinister. Let’s get away from the brighter sci-fi look we introduced with The Big House and get back to The Culling. The pacing and freedom offered in Day 1 was a lot of fun. Don’t force players to follow a specific path through a match and allow for gameplay creativity. With that out of the way, we’d like to engage you all on a specific topic: Health Station Tethering. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/ste...The Culling: Developer Video Diary 1Aug 3, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsFind out more about The Culling's journey to F2P and return to active development in our latest Developer Video Diary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo5f5ByDplk&=&feature=youtu.be
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