Friday the 13th: The Game shuts down after license expiration

In an announcement on Twitter, Gun Interactive announced that their license for Friday the 13th will expire on December 31, 2023. From that point onward, the game won’t be available for purchase. However, the Friday the 13th game will still be playable before it's shut down for people who already bought it until the end of December 2024. And if you’re hoping for a last-minute romp with the hockey masked killer, you’re in luck! The developers have reduced the price of the game to $5 with each DLC pack reduced to $0.99.

Friday the 13th: The Game is an asymmetrical horror game where players can either play to try and survive as several camp counselors’ characters or hunt down the teens as the machete-carrying Jason. If playing as Jason, the objective is to simply kill as many Camp Crystal Lake counselors as possible. The counselor's objective is to escape the camp grounds before the round ends or Jason gets you.

The rights to Friday the 13th are infamously difficult to deal with. There’s a reason we haven’t had an official Friday film since 2009, despite the horror genre popping off in recent years. It’s because there’s a copyright dispute over who owns the original script from 1980. Further complications come since the Jason Vorhees we all know and love didn’t don his iconic mask until Friday the 13th Part III: 3D.

This copyright dispute spilled over into the development of Friday the 13th: The Game. After legal battles in 2019 developed, developer Gun Interactive were prevented from updating or creating more content for the game.

A TwitLonger post from the CEO of Gun Interactive elaborated on this development stop. A while after the content stopped, the dedicated game servers for the Friday the 13th game were shut down in November 2020.

It's especially sad that Friday the 13th: The Game was killed off during the height of its development. It helped spark the popularity of the asymmetrical survival game genre alongside titles like Dead by Daylight. We will always fondly remember the horrified faces of the counselors, especially Chad, as Jason approached them in the game's intros.

There’s a small silver lining in this announcement. It was also announced recently that another Friday the 13th game is in development with composer Harry Manfredini. The iconic composer has worked on every Friday movie from the 1980 original to Jason X — only skipping Jason Takes Manhattan.

The only information we have about this project is that it's unrelated to the original Friday the 13th game. It will also feature “more realistic looking” characters, according to an interview with Manfredini with Rely on Horror.

Perhaps this new game is the reason for the end of Friday the 13th: The Game. Though, we're hoping it fares a little better than its predecessor throughout the ongoing legal battles. Hopefully, we’ll see the involvement of more Friday alumni on this future game. Manfredini worked on the original Friday game alongside Kane Hodder, who did the motion capture for Jason. and Thom Mathews, who did the motion capture for Tommy Jarvis.

It’s truly too bad that Friday the 13th: The Game never got to reach its full potential. However, if you’re interested in more iconic horror franchise games by the same studio, then today is your lucky day! Gun Interactive has an upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game that will also feature Kane Hodder and Edwin Neal — the Hitchhiker from the original movie. 

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