Dauntless Officially Shutting Down in May, Game Reportedly Unplayable After

Phoenix Labs announced the official shutdown for Dauntless – a free to play, live-service monster hunting game. The game will be killed on May 29 at 11:45 PM PST, with no more additional content or updates coming. 

“Thanks to all for being a part of the Dauntless journey,” Dauntless stated, bidding farewell to its player base.

Due to the game being a live-service in nature, Dauntless will not be available to play after May 29. Servers are shutting down alongside the game, with no news of transferring servers to third parties. This means all in-game progress and accounts will likely be forever lost. 

Dauntless gained its initial popularity thanks to its free to play nature alongside cross platform compatibility. These features made the game easy to pick up and play with friends, but the game struggled with its identity once their competitor, Capcom, released Monster Hunter Rise in 2021. Rise overtook the market in the monster hunting industry, setting new standards for monster hunting based combat. 

Despite being free to play and supporting cross platform play, Dauntless struggled to create an identity strong enough to support its IP. On Steam, the game hit a peak concurrent player count of 3,200, a figure that is undoubtedly larger across all platforms, but evidently not large enough to sustain the game’s life.