Huxley: The Dystopia

2010 Webzen Games Inc.

Platforms: PC and Microsoft Xbox 360

Our next title in the archive was a MMO title that was actually experienced and played by PC owners in closed and open beta releases between 2009 and 2010, but then was shut down completely and disappeared from sight.

Huxley was an ambitious title built in the Unreal 3 engine and was intended for release on both PC and Xbox 360 at the time. The 360 edition was to follow the PC edition after around 6 months, though this later was changed to being put on hold, pending PC sales.

A massively multiplayer online FPS title, where cities were to be able to hold up to 10,000 people and could see well over 100 players in battles. As you can see from the scans below and the various videos online, there was plenty of hype for the game – but by the time it got to the beta releases, it had now been decided to put the 360 edition on indefinite hold and the matches were cut down drastically to just 32 vs 32 players.

After just over 7 months, the servers were shut down, it was almost like Webzen pretended that the game no longer existed. It seems that to many the game just became a poor man’s Unreal Tournament 3, where much of the promise just couldn’t come to fruition. It seems the frustration of this would lead to a poor open beta launch, and then subsequent cancellation.

Hopefully some day we’ll get to learn more about what happened from the developers themselves.

With thanks to Ross Sillifant for the magazine scans.

Gallery

2 Responses to Huxley: The Dystopia

  1. I remember being in 8th grade an getting hyped to the moon and back for this game. Telling all my friends about it and making planes about distributing our roles within the game. There was only one medium and a small article in two magazines, but that was enough for me back then.

    Even tho I rarely play videogames today this loss still hurts and I just happen to think about this game again today. Now I am old and the game industry became a hot messy pile of garbage.

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