The Walking Dead franchise owner Skybound Entertainment has decided to terminate the contract it had with Starbreeze Studios, effectively canceling Overkill"s The Walking Dead"s console launches and halting further development. Following multiple delays, the cooperative shooter launched on Steam in November 2018 with console releases planned for sometime 2019.
The confirmation arrives only a few days after the publisher 505 Games quelled cancellation rumors by saying the console releases were still happening, and that development was on-going. It appears not everything had gone to plan.
"As of today, we have terminated our contract with Starbreeze Studios and will discontinue all efforts on OVERKILL’S THE WALKING DEAD," said Skybound Entertainment in an official statement. It added that the reasoning behind the termination is due to the game not meeting its quality standards, and went on to apologize to fans:
We did our best to work with Starbreeze and resolve many issues that we saw with the game, but ultimately OVERKILL’S THE WALKING DEAD did not meet our standards nor is it the quality that we were promised. We are exceedingly sorry to our fans and share their disappointment in the game.
As for the Steam version, Starbreeze released a statement today saying that "due to disagreement with license holder" the game will be pulled from the platform soon for new buyers. Those who already own the game shouldn"t be affected as long as the servers continue to function.
It also said that negotiations with Skybound Entertainment are ongoing to deliver the originally promised second season of paid content, which is sold as part of the Deluxe Edition of the game. If these plans fall through, however, we could be seeing refunds being issued in the near future.