In October, Hi-Rez Studios announced that Realm Royale Reforged would be closing down as the company shifted most of its focus over to the development of MOBA SMITE 2. With CEO Stewart Chisam calling the resulting layoffs a “failure” in his leadership at the time, little did we know that things were going to get a lot worse than they seemed at the time.
Hi-Rez announced the closure of both battle royale Realm Royale Reforged and Divine Knockout back then. Fast forward to today, and now the company has seen even more layoffs and halted major updates for SMITE 1, Paladins, and Rogue Company. All the eggs in the Hi-Rez basket are now squarely in the SMITE 2 bag. Should things go south for that game, I don’t think Hi-Rez survives at that point.
On the Realm Royale Reforged front, today is the day the game actually comes to a full close. While other games in the Hi-Rez library will stay online and just not receive updates, Realm Royale Reforged is now offline with no option to play the game in some type of offline mode against bots or locally with friends.
On the SMITE 2 front, new god Achilles has been added to the game. Achilles has been reworked to be even “more lethal” on the battlefield and you can get a look at the god’s full skillset from the latest announcement post.