Weird things are happening in Evolve Stage 2. This is his 4v1 FPS from 2K Games’ long dead free-to-play. The game has effectively killed him four years after the servers were taken offline, but in any case, it seems he’s back.
Turtle Rock Studios, creators of Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood, first released Evolve in early 2015, but unfortunately it didn’t take off. We had fun with it, but it failed to ignite players, and a little over a year later it became free-to-play as Evolve Stage 2. Unplugged in June 2018. Peer-to-peer functionality remained in Legacy Evolve (the name of his original game in 2K after releasing a free-to-play version), while his Evolve Stage 2, which relied on dedicated servers, was shut down entirely. After server support ended, the only thing left for players was to fight bots in training mode.
So until June of this year, the relay servers handling matchmaking for Legacy Evolve were down, leaving a small but dedicated community. Evolving Reunited 2.0 Discord can’t play together They complained, 2K fixed the problem, and Evolve’s peer-to-peer functionality was returned. But unexpectedly and without explanation, Evolve Stage 2 started working again.
“The server is actually back in stage 2,” Discord admin Pinocchio told me.
“I’m not completely back. [in-game] Saved and ranked matchmaking, now you can search for and host games. ”
Editor-in-Chief Tyler Wilde and I are both thoroughgoers and have launched Evolve Stage 2 on Steam in separate sessions and it’s certainly working. I had to bypass the message warning me that the My2K service and ranked matchmaking were unavailable, but then I was able to join a matchmaking game with other players against AI-controlled monsters. rice field. The Evolve Stage 2 Arcade mode also seems to work.
Evolve Stage 2’s return has been completely unannounced by 2K Games, and the game itself remains unlisted on Steam. direct link, but it’s hidden from search so no one will stumble across it and start playing it. A rep confirmed that the original Evolve relay server, which allows players to find each other for peer-to-peer play, went down and was fixed, but the dedicated server that Stage 2 relies on (2018 ) has remained unchanged, remains offline, and has stated it will never return.
So what’s really going on here? no one seems to know. Part of Evolve Discord hypothesizes that his bored 2K engineer went rogue and flipped a switch on a server somewhere in his room without telling anyone. After seeing Evolve Stage 2 in action, I wondered if the server had actually been there all along, but no one noticed until Discord started talking.
It’s also possible that Evolve Stage 2 is piggybacking on Legacy Evolve’s relay server. Evolve Stage 2 on Steam includes a beta branch called “legacyevolve – the original his Evolve product”. It’s completely separate and visibly different, but the local profile settings you made in Evolve Stage 2 were carried over to Legacy Evolve after you installed it and started a match. I don’t know if it’s possible to get and use Evolve Legacy’s relay server data in Stage 2, but it doesn’t seem entirely out of the question.
Whatever happens, the Evolve Discord community is trying to make the most of it. “In light of recent events, now is the perfect time to maximize our hopes of bringing Evolve back to the Steam store,” the group said in an announcement posted earlier this week. “They heard you about Legacy Evolve’s peer-to-peer functionality being down and even brought Stage 2 back online. You must have noticed all this in
That seems like a very far shot, and while the raw numbers are still very small, Evolve Stage 2 has an unprecedented number of players: itching to play around with bots in training mode) , peak concurrent players surged to 1,192 earlier this week.