Back 4 Blood is done. That's the news from developer Turtle Rock, which confirmed today that it has no plans for future Back 4 Blood content releases. While that'll be bad news for fans of the co-op zombie kill-fest, the good news is that Turtle Rock is working on a brand-new game.
"This phase of our war against the Ridden now comes to a close," the studio wrote on its official site. "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."
Although it experienced some success on Game Pass, Back 4 Blood had a tumultuous launch. Solo players found they couldn't earn progress towards supply points or track their stats, while multiplayer lobbies couldn't kick idle players. Both issues were eventually fixed, but those fixes didn't come soon enough for some players. Perhaps the largest indictment against Back 4 Blood is how Left 4 Dead 2 continued to achieve higher concurrent player counts on Steam despite being over a decade old.
Still, Turtle Rock didn't let a little thing like Steam player numbers keep them down. The studio released three expansions for Back 4 Blood--Tunnels of Terror, Children of the Worm, and River of Blood--alongside numerous patches and quality-of-life updates. Today, the game is a staple of Game Pass and PlayStation Plus with plenty of players left to fill a four-person Cleaner squad.
What Turtle Rock will work on next is a complete mystery, but they promised to be "Back, bigger, bolder, and better than ever!" In the meantime, zombie game fans can look forward to Dead Island 2, which arrives in April.