The Gears of War franchise for years now have been an intense action-packed third-person mature shooter. It’s filled with iconic characters, game moments, and has shown up in the gaming industry regularly after its debut on the Xbox 360. While we’ve seen spin-offs from this franchise before, fans were a bit surprised to see a new mash-up during E3 2018. Microsoft took to the stage and unveiled Gears Pop! This was a new PvP strategy game that mixed the Gears franchise with the Pop figurines art style.
Overall, the game was nothing too out of the ordinary. We’ve seen this style of a game done plenty of times before. You have a base with two lanes leading to the opposing player’s side. From there, you can send out troops and take over outposts while ultimately destroying the opposing players’ base to win the game. Of course, there were plenty of in-app purchases that players could swipe up and buff their roster which may make some games a bit more challenging to those that didn’t opt to spend any real currency.
This game was developed by Mediatonic and if the name sounds familiar then you can thank the Fall Guys craze. The development team is currently working on new seasons and content for Fall Guys which became a surprise hit this year, but that may mean the exodus of Gears Pop. Apparently, the development team is preparing to shut down the servers for good this coming year.
Gears Pop is something that would require more attention to continue making the game appealing. According to reports, Mediatonic feels that simply keeping the servers active is not going to generate enough players and as a result, the servers will be coming to a complete shutdown on April 26, 2021. With that said, the game will still be available with popular events and more drops leading up to the shutdown date. There are even refunds going on to those that have made an in-app purchase over the past 90 days. Of course, right now all the in-app purchases are no longer available.