Turtle Rock has announced that it will stop active development for Back 4 Blood, its co-op, zombie themed FPS. The game will remain live with support, but the team has moved on to a new game in development.
Announcing their decision on their site, the team noted that Back 4 Blood, which was released in late 2021, had three expansions. Tunnels of Terror, Children of the Worm, and River of Blood were those three released expansions. River of Blood came out back in December, closing out 2022, and this is where the development comes to an end.
“Turtle Rock Studios is actually pretty small for a studio making AAA games. We don’t have quite enough folks to continue working on Back 4 Blood content while we spin up another game – yes, another game! Given this, it’s time for us to put our heads down, get back in the lab, and get to work on the next big thing.”
Turtle Rock, which was acquired by Tencent back in 2021, is clear about moving on, but with the game officially out for less than a year and a half at this point, not shutting it down works with that. Development usually ends at a later date than this one, but there are other games that are still around, attracting an active community of varying degrees, even when it's still running in a maintenance mode.
The studio has a history with zombies, having created the first Left 4 Dead, and Back 4 Blood was a kind of spiritual successor to that game and was published under Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment. We found it a fun multiplayer game, and even included it on our list of 10 co-op games to play when you have MMO burnout.
There’s no word yet on just what Turtle Rock will be working on next. Their history, in addition to zombies, also includes Counter-Strike, and Evolve.
