Lemnis Gate is going offline this July

In a recent Steam update, Ratloop Games announced that support for its turn based FPS game ‘Lemnis Gate’ would cease on July 11th of this year. As a result, the final day you will be able to purchase the game is April 11th. While completely inaccessible on PC, console players will still be able to play locally- but all online features will be stopped. This may come as quite a shock for fans, especially considering how the game only released in August 2021. That means it would have been less than 2 years before the project’s shut down. But what led to this point?

Lemnis Gate is (or was depending on when you read this) a very inventive twist on the oversaturated multiplayer FPS genre. While you still had your objectives to capture and opposing players to kill, the developers shook up the formula by making it all turn based. With 25 seconds per round, each team would take on the role of different operatives where they would try to complete objectives whilst setting traps for the other team in future rounds. These would then be layered on top of each other in future rounds- meaning you could kill a player capturing an objective three rounds ago- preventing your team from having that advantage in future.

If it sounds complicated, that’s because it was. A constantly evolving battlefield meant you had to always think on your feet- and its one that clicked with a lot of players on release. Unfortunately, however, the first few days of release were the peak of the game’s popularity. With an all time player count of only 807 in September 2021, support quickly petered off in the following months. It got so bad that three months later in December, the player count rocketed down by over 95% to a height of 33. Since then, things only went downhill.

While it’s not obvious as to why the player count dropped so drastically, we can speculate. With a complicated premise, lack of advertising, and a noticeable lack of support for the game post-launch, the game (while having a compelling twist on the FPS genre) didn’t do enough to build upon what it had to begin with. The concept was enough to get players interested but wasn’t intuitive enough to keep them engaged. That leads us to the point we are now in March 2023. With an average player count hovering around 10, there is no reason to keep this project going.

Ratloop Games confirmed the end of their support of Lemnis Gate with their Steam announcement. If you were a fan of the game or among the 10 that are still playing, this is rough news. If anything, this just shows how ruthless the multiplayer FPS landscape is. Even with an innovative idea, without something like a battle pass or new game modes to keep people playing constantly, there’s unfortunately little hope for projects like this. In their concluding statement, Ratloop Games said the following:

“We want to thank you all for your support with Lemnis Gate, joining us for many incredible rounds in the loop. We’ve truly loved seeing your passion for the game, the mind-bending strategies you created and how you embraced this innovative twist on the FPS genre”