After being in early access for nearly three months, Skybound Games and Other Ocean Interactive have decided to halt the development of The Walking Dead: Betrayal.

The project is scheduled to be removed from Steam early next week.

In a recent blog post, Skybound Games announced that The Walking Dead: Betrayal will be delisted from Steam on December 1. Subsequently, by December 15, the game will be entirely shut down. Customers who have purchased the game will be eligible for a full refund, and further updates will be communicated on both Steam and the official TWD: Betrayal Discord server.

Unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con in July, The Walking Dead: Betrayal is a multiplayer game where up to eight survivors collaborate to fend off the undead. The game places significant emphasis on social deception and survival, which among many other reasons lead to its downfall.

In The Walking Dead: Betrayal, players are given the choice to deceive fellow survivors or cooperate with them to “navigate the challenges of the apocalypse”.

Once upon a time The Walking Dead was one of the world’s most popular IP’s for a good long while, given the nature of media adaptations of comics and other forms of entertainment, the popularity that stemmed from AMC’s TV series spawned a literal fuck-load of cash grab rubbish games made to capitalize upon consumers infatuated with the show.

This encompassed, but was not restricted to, games such as The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, boasting an impressive user score of 40 on Metacritic. Overkill’s The Walking Dead, on the other hand, was so half-arsed and void of enthusiasm, leading to its death just a handful of months post-release. While Saints & Sinners is acknowledged as a solid title, it’s exclusively available on VR headsets.

The recently launched The Walking Dead: Destinies offers a hilariously lackluster yet amusing abridged adaptation covering the initial seasons of the TV show, and it’s safe to say it falls short of expectations.

The Walking Dead was also used to shovel out a plethora of rubbish mobile games, no doubt filled with in-app purchases, and for whatever goddamn reason there’s even a NFT blockchain game called The Walking Dead Empires.

Needless to say, the only Walking Dead “game” worth your time would have to be the first season of Telltale’s game series.

Skybound Games stated, “Despite the considerable effort invested in the game, we were unable to establish the vibrant community of backstabbers we initially envisioned.” Although the community may not have reached the critical mass needed for sustained gameplay, there are still disappointed fans and collectors who insist on retaining the game in their library.

Judging from my observations, it appears to be a rather lackluster social deduction game. This impression is further supported by the mixed reviews it garnered since its initial release, accumulating just 113 reviews on Steam in total. The game’s poor sales performance ultimately led to its shutdown after a mere three months.

Those who did happen to buy it will be entitled to a full refund as the game will be shut down come December 15th.