Scrapped Atomic Heart multiplayer won’t be added back in as DLC

It’s been well over five years since it was announced, but Mundfish’ Atomic Heart is just over a month away from finally releasing for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms. The game received a short but sweet new trailer during The Game Awards in December, and now Mundfish founder and game director Robert Bagratuni has provided a bit of insight into its development via a new interview with Wccftech.

Related: When is the release date of Atomic Heart?

One interesting detail Bagratuni touched on was the game’s multiplayer — or rather lack thereof. As a first-person shooter, some may think a multiplayer mode was a given considering the mode’s popularity across most other shooters like the Call of Duty games. Even a game like Deathloop, which was a primarily single-player experience, offered some form of multiplayer.

It turns out that a multiplayer mode for Atomic Heart was on the cards and it even sounds like it was going to be a big feature for the game. While it wasn’t an easy choice to make, the team decided to cut multiplayer altogether, with Bagratuni explaining that the studio had to rein on its ambitions for the title.

Atomic Heart will be receiving no fewer than four DLC packs after launch, but Bagratuni has already ruled out any intentions of adding multiplayer back in. Instead, the goal of the DLC will be to offer new gameplay challenges and expand on the game’s alternate history setting. “The entire Atomic Heart experience will be single-player, focusing on the story and player experience. No multiplayer add-ons are planned at this time,” confirmed Bagratuni.

While it’s a shame that the multiplayer facet was never fully realized, this’ll hopefully mean the core single-player experience is as refined as it can be since the developers could focus all their time and energy on it.

That said, controversy still lingers over Atomic Heart. Just a couple of months ago, it was alleged that employees were subjected to numerous time crunches, poor pay, and even mass layoffs. Apparently, investors wished to see a working build of the game every three months and would regularly demand reworks. If true, this could be a contributing factor behind Atomic Heart’s lengthy development time.