Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade's servers are now shut down

An orc looks menacingly into the camera with a giant gun — (Image credit: Behaviour Interactive)

Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade is eternal no more – Behaviour Interactive pulled the plug on PvP and PvE servers on September 10.

This means that the free-to-play PC game is now entirely unplayable, just shy of its fifth birthday. It's prompted a handful of disappointed fans to post negative reviews on Steam, although the game's controversial free-to-play gated content had seen it otherwise clock up a mostly "mixed" response from players.

"Today we have officially sunset the game," Behaviour Interactive said in a post on Steam on September 10. "As part of the shutdown, all personal data related to Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade has been removed.

"We are proud of all of the work that went into Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade, and for the amazing community that rallied behind the game. Thank you for everything, we appreciate all of your support through the years."

"After having more hours in this game than in any other game on steam I can say that this shooter/melee madness became my all-time favorite for this genre," said one player, who has amassed a staggering 1729.5 hours playing the game.

"Sure the game had its issues like devs overpromising, bugs and glitches, game optimization and map design was not so great, there were issues with balance, etc. But at the end of the day, I think the end result was a very unique game that at least made an attempt to live up to what a w40k shooter should feel like.

"I'd just like to thank you Eternal Crusade, it was fun."

ICYMI, in other Warhammer news, Warhammer 40K: Darktide will be penned by Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor writer, Dan Abnett. Having written the Gaunt's Ghosts series, Abnett is well-known to the Warhammer community, making him a good fit for the premise of Darktide.

Like Vermintide, Darktide is a four-player co-op game that will see players using different abilities and weapons to take on enemies, which on this occasion will be a heretical cult called the Admonition.

Warhammer 40K: Darktide is slated to launch later this year on PC and Xbox Series X/S.

There's still a lot to get excited about in gaming this year. Here are the upcoming games of 2021 we really just can't wait for.

Vikki Blake is GamesRadar+'s Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.