Red 5 Studios has removed the PvP and eSports elements from it’s free-to-play MMOFPS Firefall.

Red 5 Studios’ CEO, Mark Kern, announced in a letter to the Firefall community earlier this month that the studio would be scrapping the current version of its PvP system in its free-to-play MMOFPS. The PvP system was reportedly only being utilized by 3% of the user base.

Kern penned, ’we’re going to regroup, rethink, and deliver the best PvP system we can that can be enjoyed by everyone. We don’t have a timetable for this, but at some near future point we will shut off the PvP aspect of the game, which we feel does not represent Firefall at its best, and relaunch that part of the game when its ready. ’

Kern’s letter to the community included a remark on their decision to keep eSports in mind during the development process. He wrote, ’We have gone through several iterations, and for some time, pursued the controversial e-Sports route. As many of you know, its not working very well.”

That announcement, which preceded more announcements, appears to have been made on the heels of a lot of sudden decision making internally. Their tournament partners have not yet taken down their pages for Firefall competition.

The second to last news post on the ESL’s Firefall portal says, “Go4Firefall will be taking a little break in September and will be back in October to accommodate the players and teams to catch up with the latest patches and PVP changes and also allow us here to implement some of the many feedback we received to allow a better experience for teams and players that will help grow Firefall PVP.”

Turtle Entertainment’s Electronics Sports League had been hosting ’GO4Firefall’ cups since April of this year, paying out €10,000 a month.

Within a week of Kern’s letter to the community Red 5 Studios would circulate a press release noting that the studio was ’being reorganized prior to the launch of Firefall.’ The press release would add that the majority of the layoffs, which totaled about 10 percent of its staff, would primarily be from Red 5’s video entertainment channel Stage 5 TV.

One of the employees laid off was Morgan Romine, industry veteran and founder of the all girls eSports team the Frag Dolls. She was working as the eSports Director; this is not a position that Red 5 is planning to refill.

Red 5 had previously invited eSports personalities Scott ’SirScoots’ Smith and Sean ’Day[9]’ Plott to appear during a streaming marathon last July they called Firefall Fest. Smith and Plott played the game’s competitive mode ’Jet Ball’ and hosted a Q-and-A with one of Red 5’s developers.

We reached out to ESL for a comment shortly before publication, but due to the time difference between American and Europe they could not be reached. GameSpot eSports will update this story when they respond.

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