It's a tale we've all heard before. Talented developers make an interesting take on a live-service title, but simply can't find the audience to sustain it. Usually, this leads to games getting shut down, and people losing their jobs. However, Moonshot Games isn't planning for either with Wildgate, even if its next patch will be its last for a long time.
In a Steam post talking about July's patch 1.5.4, game director Dustin Browder reveals that while Wildgate is set to get some more improvements, and has had many since its launch last July, this patch is going to be the last one in a long time. "Despite all our attempts to bring new and more players into the game, Wildgate hasn't found a large enough audience to sustain ongoing development," he explained.
You'd expect this to be followed by the announcement that the team has made the tough decision to shut down the servers and lay everyone off, but that isn't the case. Well, there won't be any more layoffs, at least. Wildgate is not going away, the post says. "Wildgate will continue to receive occasional updates like bug fixes, balance updates, and small events, activations or rewards that generally repurpose existing content. And new players will still be able to buy the game on all platforms (Steam, EGS, Xbox, and PS) - and we plan on participating in as many sales and discounts as we can."
Moonshot appears to be largely giving the future of the game to its community, handing over the Discord to community rule, and having a small, core team continue to monitor what's going on with Wildgate. As of the time of writing, Wildgate has a daily peak player count of around 30 people via SteamDB, but it has garnered thousands of reviews since launch, most of which are positive. Perhaps something could bring everyone aboard, but it will likely take a small miracle to save this community.