Friday the 13th: The Game is officially closing up shop.
Developer Gun Interactive announced on June 8 that, due to the expiration of its license to use the Friday the 13th IP, it will remove the game from digital storefronts on December 31, 2023. While F13 will still be playable for “at least” another year after that point, according to Gun Interactive’s announcement, no new digital copies of the game will be available.
In the meantime, Gun has announced it plans to reduce the price of F13’s base game to $4.99, while all its DLC packs will be discounted to $0.99. These prices will stay in place until F13’s pulled from sale next New Year’s Eve.
F13: The Game originally launched in 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC, as an asymmetric multiplayer game for up to 9 players. One runs around as famous murderer Jason Voorhees, while all the others are camp counselors frantically trying to find ways to escape from or kill Jason.
F13 was originally funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign, and included countless Easter eggs from the long-running film franchise. This included playable characters like Jason’s occasional nemesis Tommy Jarvis (Thom Matthews); taped audio diaries from Jason’s mother Pamela; and recognizable kills from the films.
Post-launch, Gun Interactive maintained a consistent release schedule that saw the addition of more counselors, cosmetics, and gameplay modes, which included both single-player missions and a virtual museum of series lore.
However, one of the reasons why there hasn’t been a new Friday the 13th movie since 2009 is because the rights to the series were tied up in court. Starting in 2016, the original F13 screenwriter Victor Miller sought to reclaim the domestic rights to F13, in what became a two-year court battle against series producer Sean Cunningham.
As fallout from that lawsuit, Gun Interactive had to stop working on F13 The Game, and was blocked from releasing any content that hadn’t already passed console certification. That blocked content included the addition of a new map and killer based on 2001’s Jason X, as well as a new game mode, Paranoia, where a counselor could become the killer by finding Jason’s mask.
Miller subsequently won the court battle in 2018, which entitles him to full ownership of all elements of F13 that were established in the original 1980 movie. While a lot about Jason and the series was only established in later films – for example, he didn’t pick up his famous hockey mask until Part III in 1982 – it still means Miller has control of many bedrock elements of series lore like Camp Crystal Lake.
None of that helps Gun Interactive, though, or brings F13 The Game back from the dead. Fangoria has reported that a new F13 game by a mystery developer is quietly in the works, and Gun is currently preparing to launch a new asymmetric horror game with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
