The multiplayer survival sandbox Rend pretty much depends on lots of people being active at any given time, what with its factional structure and reliance on players working together to build up their centralized base. So it’s pretty bad news when the total player count on any given day hits no more than a baker’s dozen.
According to Steamcharts, Rend player numbers have gone into terminal velocity, plummeting from over 5,000 players at its absolute peak mid-2018 to just 13 at a 24-hour peak. At the time of this writing, there are only nine people playing the game.
Further digging on the game’s Steam page seems to suggest that most people believe that developer/publisher Frostkeep Studios have given up on the title, which has prompted reviews warning people not to buy the game. These warnings appear to be heeded, as even positive reviews remark that the game is effectively dead. One positive reviewer even hoped that Frostkeep would turn Rend over to someone else to keep things updated.
Was Rend abandoned, though? If you recall our interview with Frostkeep’s Jeremy Wood and Michele Cagle from this past spring, it was apparently always the team’s intention to release the game in a fully launched state. Wood even went so far as to argue that players didn’t want additional vertical content added on because it “ruins the specific focus and flavor of this game.” As for Frostkeep itself, it has been demonstrably growing its team over the year, and the studio is working on a new title that’s “completely unlike Rend.” The game’s official Twitter, meanwhile, appears relegated to simply retweeting Frostkeep’s tweets.
It’s a pity that Rend is simply dying on the vine. Our own preview of the title’s alpha last year was impressed at the truly social nature of the otherwise open PvP title, and the few who have had nice things to say about the game have touted the camaraderie it provided. That, however, all appears to be fading away.
