A MOBA that’s been in development for 15 years and launched into early access in May 2025 to a “mostly positive” Steam rating has unceremoniously shut down. The game never left its early-access period and, according to developer Lunchbox Entertainment, couldn’t keep going despite the team’s best efforts.
You may have never heard of this game before now. Titled Sirocco, it’s a 5v5 naval brawler where customizable boats try to send each other to the bottom of the sea. It started as a Warcraft 3 mod over a decade ago before the team made the concept–a sort of Battleships-esque multiplayer online battle arena–a full-blown game. It’s only ever peaked at 882 players some four months ago, according to SteamDB data. And now, with the game barely cracking 30 players at any given time since its May 2025 launch, Lunchbox Entertainment has decided to pull the plug on Sirocco servers.
“We are shutting down our servers indefinitely on August 20, 2025 at 3PM ET,” the team wrote in a Steam update post. “After that time, the game will be unplayable. […] We are sorry for the inconvenience and grateful for your support. If you have questions, reach out in Discord and we will do our best to help.”
In the official Sirocco Discord server, developer Jack of Boxes gave a bit more details on August 18, writing that the team is proud of the game and hopes to bring it back.
“Hi everyone, getting emotional just writing this,” Jack of Boxes wrote. “Today is the day we pull the plug on our servers. Despite our best efforts, we can’t keep Sirocco going. So, we’ll be shutting things down [on] Wednesday, the 20th. In other words, Sirocco will go offline in two days. All Patreon supporters who [subscribed] in the last 90 days have been refunded. As much as it sucks to shut off the servers, we’re really proud of Sirocco and we are going to do everything we can to keep making games so one day we can bring back Sirocco in the future when we have more resources. […] Thank you all for being a truly amazing community. You all have gone above and beyond to make our game and community the best it could be and, for that, I can’t thank you enough.”
