Turtle Rock Studios, developers of Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood, originally launched their 4v1 shooter Evolve back in 2015. Unfortunately, due to some gameplay and monetization issues, Evolve never managed to catch on and secure itself a sizable playerbase. As a last ditch effort Turtle Rock Studios released Evolve: Stage 2 as a free-to-play game, though once again, things didn't go well and the servers were ultimately shut down in 2018.

This is usually where the story would end, but in a refreshing little twist, Evolve: Stage 2 has now been given another chance! Thanks to a recent update, peer-to-peer servers and parts of the matchmaking system have now been restored, thus enabling players to jump into matches without too much hassle.

As a result, Evolve: Stage 2 currently has ~1000 players running around, which for a game that was shut down four years ago really is quite impressive! So if you have any sort of nostalgia for Evolve, and you have the game on your Steam account, this would be the perfect time to take it for another spin.

The one big catch, and this one is sadly quite massive, is that Evolve: Stage 2 is still unlisted on Steam. So if you don't already have access to the game, you are unfortunately out of luck and simply cannot play. Even trying to access direct links to the installer doesn't yield any results, so for now Evolve's rebirth is a bit of an exclusive affair.

You can read a little more about Evolve: Stage 2, as well as follow any potential updates, over at Steam.