"Tribes 3: Rivals" got everyone excited this past February with a great demo at Steam Next Fest. The game launched in Early Access on March 12, 2024, promising a "rebirth" of the beloved first-person sports slash shooter with a simple business model: a $20 initial fee and no microtransactions.

It hasn't worked; according to SteamDB, Tribes 3: Rivals currently has 27 players. The game's maximum simultaneous player count was 890 at launch.

Currently, the Tribes 3: Rivals Steam page has a post with a strange title that seems to be even more bad news for players: "Giving Back to Tribes 3 & Starsiege:. Deadzone Players." this note is addressed to the community, which is basically a way of saying the loud part very quietly.

Developer Prophecy states that it will "give credit to all players who have purchased from Starsiege: Deadzone or Tribes 3 in the past." Starsiege: Deadzone is an escape shooter that was released last July and is made by the same developer; Prophecy says these credits will be issued for the new game, Ultra Strikers, a cartoonish 3vs3 sports shooter, with no release date as of yet.

Essentially, money spent on these games can be used 1:1 to purchase Ultra Strikers. What's odd about this announcement is that essentially what Prophecy is trying to say here is, "Look, it didn't work. Instead, the wording is that the studio will give players a credit for money spent on Tribes. The Steam reviews for [Tribes 3] (which were not good to begin with, mainly due to the difficulty of finding other players) are being slammed as we speak."

Toward the end of the announcement, Prophecy almost, if not quite, says that Tribes 3 is over." We are doing our best to support Tribes 3 with limited updates (along with a planned discount sale to bring in more players) and will return to Starsiege Deadzone if the company has the resources, but unfortunately both games are still successful enough to support the studio and (as much as we love them) cannot be the main focus of development right now."

Prophecy cannot bring itself to just say the obvious, even though all players certainly understand the message. This was not the revival we had hoped for; a Lazarus-class revival will be necessary if Tribes3 is to remain a going concern. But at the same time, if there is ever a time for clear communication about the Early Access game, it will be when the decision is made to shut down the life support system. Farewell, Tribes 3: Rivals, we barely knew you. See you in Tribes 4 in 10 years.