Hawken was one of the first high-profile videogame titles compatible with modern virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs). Way back in 2014, Hawken Entertainment made great efforts to ensure compatibility with the original Oculus Rift development kit (aka DK1) and that support was noticed by Oculus VR, who subsequently championed the title for VR. However, support for the medium eventually faded and now, will never come to fruition.
Reloaded Games, publisher of Hawken, has today announced that the PC edition of Hawken will soon close its servers, and thus no longer be playable. Due to close on 2nd January 2018, development of Hawken will cease as the team ‘refocus their development efforts’.
An official statement from Hawken Entertainment reads as follows:
“Pilots, It’s been an incredible journey since the introduction of Hawken on Steam, back in 2014. The game’s success has been largely due to your continuous support. The Hawken community has been the cornerstone of this ever-evolving franchise. After 3 great years, we are shutting down the PC Steam servers to refocus our development efforts. The PC game will officially be removed on January 2, 2018, and all DLC and purchasable content will also be unavailable starting today. It’s been an incredibly rewarding experience working alongside such a dedicated PC player base. Your feedback and support has been invaluable to us, and the team looks forward to creating more great games based on what we’ve learned from you. Thank you all very much for your support! [sic]”
Hawken is also available for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, though it’s currently not known whether the closure will affect those editions also. Of course, neither of the console versions of the videogame ever benefited from VR support of any kind.
Whether the development team of Hawken will allow for modders to take control of the videogame and perhaps patch in their own kind of VR support (as has often been suggested throughout the videogame’s lifespan) remains to be seen. However, even if this were the case, without a central server network the community is likely to disappear almost completely very quickly.
VRFocus will keep you updated with any possibility of Hawken receiving the VR compatibility it once promised, but as of today things don’t look good for the many fans that have been waiting 3 years for the videogame to come good on its initial VR promise.
via Mint VR