Friday the 13th game drops dedicated servers in final patch

Gun Media has announced that Friday the 13th: The Game will soon receive its final quality-of-life patch. The game’s community manager, Matt Shotcha, broke the news in a forum post on Tuesday.

Full patch notes will be published later this month, but the main takeaway is that dedicated servers will be shut down in November, with the game reverting back to its original peer-to-peer networking. Both “quick play” and private matches will remain playable.

A “long list of player issues” is also being addressed, according to the post.

“The team at Gun wants to thank each and every player and fan that has made Friday the 13th: The Game what it is today,” Shotcha added. “We know this news is hard to hear, despite being inevitable. We appreciate each and every one of you.”

I’ve logged 524 hours in this game, forged friendships, and made memories that’ll stick with me forever. 

It’s a shame that the ongoing litigation between screenwriter Victor Miller and Sean S. Cunningham prevented it from having the sort of life it deserved, both as a unique asymmetrical online game and as an obvious labor of love.

“There’s a whole new generation of people for whom their very first experience with Friday the 13th was interactive. They were in it. And they died in the Higgins barn; they died in Pinehurst,” co-creator Wes Keltner told me on the phone in 2018.

“We hear a lot of those stories: ‘My dad loves these movies, and it brought us together. I play the game, and he sits and watches me and laughs and points things out.’ We’ve had three couples get engaged in our game.”

“I may be a little biased here, but the game is the one thing that’s keeping this franchise alive at the moment. I think we did it right. We handled the source material with care,” said Ronnie Hobbs, the game’s other co-creator.

“I’ll sit by [‘Jason’ actor Kane Hodder] at conventions, and hundreds of young people will come through, and they have him sign copies of our game. They didn’t get to see him in Part VII, but now they know him as the guy who was in the video game.”

Friday first went live on May 26, 2017.