When an online game shuts down its servers, that usually means it’s gone forever. There have been a few fan attempts to keep a few closed online games open over the years, but it’s very rare that the publisher of an online game that closes its doors opens them again.
However, that’s exactly what’s happening this week with a title that turned off its servers in July 2018. The game is Gigantic, and it’s being revived for what’s being labeled as a one-time event starting on Thursday.
PC Gamer reports that a number of former PC Gigantic players have received invites to join the event, which will start at 3 pm Eastern time (Noon Pacific) on October 5, and will end at midnight Eastern time on October 7 (9 pm Pacific October 6).
Gigantic was developed by Motiga, and was a free-to-play hero-based shooter where two teams of five players each battled it out online. The big feature, literally, in this game was that each team also had a kaiju-style monster as well, The teams battled to be the first to take out the other team’s gigantic team member.
The game was published by Perfect World and after a long beta period, it finally launched in 2017 for the PC and Xbox One. Unfortunately, it didn’t generate a huge player base, and in 2018, Perfect World closed Motiga and shut down the Gigantic servers.
Since then, the game has continued to have a small but loyal fan following. Perfect World was later acquired by Embracer and its games and IP were added to Gearbox Publishing. It’s Gearbox that’s responsible for this week’s brief revival. Unfortunately, people who didn’t get directly invited to the event won’t be able to participate.
Gearbox has not yet commented on whether this so-called “one-time only, throwback event” is in fact a test to see if Gigantic could get a full restart. Even if it isn’t, it’s certainly a rare thing to see a game thought to be dead and gone to get this kind of second life.