Funcom Shuts Down Metal: Hellsinger Studio The Outsiders — The Real Story for Rhythm-FPS Fans

This one stings: Metal meets the layoff era

Funcom has closed The Outsiders, the Stockholm team behind Metal: Hellsinger. As someone who still replays its boss fights just to nail a perfect beat streak, this caught my attention because it’s yet another example of a studio delivering a distinctive hit and getting shuttered anyway. It’s not just sad; it’s a signal about where mid-budget, high-style projects stand in 2025’s gaming economy.

Key Takeaways

• The Outsiders is closed as part of wider layoffs at Funcom; founder David Goldfarb confirmed the move and thanked the team.
• Metal: Hellsinger remains playable, but long-term support, new DLC, or a sequel are now uncertain.
• Funcom is concentrating resources around bigger, ongoing projects like Dune: Awakening.
• This follows a broader industry pattern: critically loved projects don’t guarantee studio safety.

Breaking down the announcement

The Outsiders’ story has been a rollercoaster. Co-founded by David Goldfarb (Battlefield 3, Payday 2) nearly a decade ago, the studio first made waves with Darkborn (Project Wight) before that project was cancelled. They rallied with Metal: Hellsinger in 2022-a ferocious rhythm-FPS that synced your shots to a metal soundtrack featuring voices like Serj Tankian and Alissa White-Gluz. It carved out a passionate community, picked up accolades and DLC, and-crucially-proved that rhythm mechanics could elevate a shooter without feeling like a gimmick.

Now, The Outsiders is gone. Funcom framed the move as part of a broader restructuring and resource shift. Goldfarb publicly acknowledged the closure and paid tribute to the team. If you’ve followed the Nordic scene over the past few years, this will feel grimly familiar: consolidation and layoffs keep swallowing distinctive mid-sized studios, even when their games punch above their weight.

The real story: Why close a team that just delivered?

Let’s cut through the corporate phrasing. Metal: Hellsinger is excellent, but it’s also a niche proposition: a single-player, tightly scoped rhythm-FPS with licensed music. That combo means higher audio costs and limited monetization runway compared to live-service sandboxes. Even with solid sales and strong word of mouth, it’s hard to compete for internal oxygen when your parent company is all-in on a massive, expensive survival MMO like Dune: Awakening and continuing service games like Conan Exiles.

There’s also the modern publisher calculus: focus on a few “platform” products that can run for years, trim anything that looks boutique, and redeploy staff. We’ve seen variations of this across the industry—Tango Gameworks shut down after the breakout Hi-Fi Rush, Volition closed after rebooting Saints Row, and Free Radical never even got their TimeSplitters revival out the door. In that context, The Outsiders’ fate isn’t surprising. It’s just depressing.

What this changes for players right now

The good news: Metal: Hellsinger is still available on PC and current-gen consoles, and it’s a complete single-player package. Leaderboards and the core experience should continue to function. If you’ve been meaning to play, you’re not walking into a half-finished live service about to lose support.

The uncertain part is everything beyond maintenance. The odds of substantial patches, more DLC, or a full sequel just dropped. The IP sits under Funcom’s umbrella, so a future handoff to another team is possible, but there’s no sign of that today. If you care about preservation and rhythm-FPS design, the best move is simple: play it, talk about it, keep the community active. That signal matters when publishers weigh whether to revisit an IP.

If you’re diving in (or returning), a few practical tips from many, many retries:

• Use the audio calibration tool—latency ruins rhythm scoring more than any enemy.
• Start on Normal to internalize beat patterns, then bump to Hard once your muscle memory locks in.
• Swap weapons to match track intensity; the shotgun lands satisfyingly on downbeats, while the pistols are great for maintaining combo flow.
• Don’t sleep on the Dream of the Beast DLC if you want more tracks and a tougher loop.

If you loved Metal: Hellsinger, try these next

Nothing scratches exactly the same itch, but a few games get close:

• BPM: Bullets Per Minute — The other rhythm-FPS, more roguelite and twitchy but perfect if you like syncing shots to a metronome.
• Hi-Fi Rush — Not a shooter, but its attack-on-the-beat combat nails that “play the soundtrack” feel.
• Crypt of the NecroDancer / Cadence of Hyrule — Beat-driven movement and combat with mechanical depth for days.
• Pistol Whip (VR) — FPS rhythm in VR with a flowing, “John Wick on a track” vibe.
• Thumper — Pure rhythm aggression; when Metal: Hellsinger’s intensity is what you crave, this channels it.

Why this matters beyond one studio

The Outsiders’ closure reinforces an uncomfortable truth: style-forward, mid-scope games can earn love and still lose the internal resource battle. That’s not a knock on Funcom specifically; it’s where the entire industry has drifted. From a player’s perspective, the answer is to champion the games that take risks and actually buy them close to launch—because the new, weird stuff we want doesn’t survive on vibes alone.

TL;DR

Funcom shut down The Outsiders, the team behind Metal: Hellsinger, during wider layoffs. The game remains playable, but future content or a sequel is uncertain as Funcom focuses on larger live-service projects. It’s another reminder that in 2025, critical success doesn’t guarantee studio security—so support the inventive projects you want to see more of.