Frag Lab, the Kyiv-based studio behind the free-to-play PvEvP shooter Shatterline, is going through a tough time. Staff reductions and office abandonment are planned, but the company wants to save Shatterline and is looking for help in financing and marketing the game.

Back on February 5, 2024, the studio published an announcement on Steam, in which they talked about the state of the game, thanking players for their concern and support.

“The war is still raging on, day 712. It is hard, no use sugarcoating it. We’ve been hoping against hope for a swift breakthrough. It is emotionally taxing and draining for everyone. But.

Ukraine is not giving up, and neither are we. We are standing at a precipice, but we are not losing hope. We are looking for marketing help to bring in more players. While we are at it, we understand our most loyal friends – you – are sticking with us. We don’t seek riches. We want to survive and finish the game. And we want to show how much your support means: the new Season Foxtrot is on us, free for everyone,” the statement says.

The thing is that after very good results at release – 21,760 online players a year and a half ago – Shatterline started losing its audience. Nowadays, the Ukrainian shooter’s online presence rarely reaches 500 players, usually only 150-400 people are in the game at the same time. The game’s release on consoles, which was planned for early 2023, has not taken place.

As the editorial office knows from its own sources, the studio has lost funding for the second time (the first was the end of cooperation with Wargaming in August 2022) and some of Frag Lab’s employees, who reached more than 200 people in 2022, are looking for new jobs. The studio plans to downsize and give up its large office in the center of Kyiv.

However, Frag Lab has no plans to shut down Shatterline servers and wants to keep the game alive by looking for new partners.

The market of free online shooters is highly competitive and risky. Even some big companies have been burned by it, such as Ubisoft’s fiasco with Hyper Scape or the recent shutdown of Creative Assembly’s shooter Hyenas just a few months after its announcement.

However, a free online shooter can exist for a long time with a small number of players, as Survarium by Kyiv-based VG Entertainment (formerly Vostok Games) is an example of this. This game was released back in 2015, failed to gather a large audience, but nevertheless existed until May 2022. VG Entertainment Studio has retained the core team and is currently working on a new project.

So we hope that Frag Lab will find the support and funds to continue developing Shatterline. It’s a really good game.

As for the new Foxtrot season for Shatterline, as we mentioned earlier, it will be completely free for all players, containing new rewards, a new short PvE episode “Quicksand”, updates to the Expedition mode, and some bug fixes.

If you would like to support the developers of Shatterline, then maybe now is the time to get back into the game and invite your friends. We wish Frag Lab a good time.