Strange Girl Gaming

World Wrestling Entertainment has confirmed that WWE 2K21 has been cancelled.

The news was confirmed in an investor call. Not that this is surprising given the abysmal performance of WWE 2K20. I buy the new game every single year and have done for as long as I can remember, even as a kid, my mum would get it for me.

Last year’s game was a disaster and was torn apart by old and new fans alike. Visual Concepts destroyed the game; it was a bug-riddled glitchy mess. Some players could not even play the game due to glitches breaking it.

Honestly, I do believe that the developer was to blame. Long-time WWE game developer Yuke’s chose to go a separate way to 2K, which led to the latter getting Visual Concepts to take over development. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, no doubt the publisher regrets its decision. Mind you, the WWE games were becoming stale anyway but at least Yuke’s made them playable.

A new game has been released in the franchise every year since 2000 – it started as WWF Smackdown before becoming WWE Smackdown. In 2004 it became Smackdown vs Raw (still one of the best wrestling games), then known as WWE before 2K took over from THQ in 2013 to become WWE 2K.

However, despite the cancellation of 2K21, that doesn’t mean that no new wrestling game will be released. In a YouTube video by Justin Leeper (see below) claimed that 2K would publish “a different kind of WWE game from a different kind of developer that is not Visual Concepts.” However, he gave no further details. It is worth noting that Leeper used to be a writer for the 2K series.

Honestly, I don’t think it is a bad thing that the annual game is not being released this year, after last year’s catastrophe. Look at Assassin’s Creed, that franchise was becoming stale, then Ubisoft shifted its release to every two years instead of every year. For which the series benefitted, Origins and Odyssey are two of the best AC games, in fact, AC Odyssey is one of the best games this generation.

I am curious as to what this “different kind of WWE game” is, hopefully, we won’t have to wait a ridiculous amount of time to find out. But, with the crazy times, we find ourselves in, it could be a long wait.