The history of SUPER PEOPLE
Betas, a million-dollar tournament, two shutdowns, a zombie game nobody saw coming and a hashtag that wouldn't go away. How we got here.
The betas
SUPER PEOPLE from Korean studio Wonder People was battle royale where every round hands you a superhuman class with its own powers. After an alpha test in August 2021, the Global Closed Beta ran from December 7, 2021 to February 28, 2022. It was meant to end on December 27, but more than a million players joined and it made Steam's top 17, so it was extended; by the end it had 4 million downloads. A short test session without crafting followed on March 12–14, 2022.
The Final Beta
The Final Beta ran from August 17 to 31, 2022 with the new Titan class and the Super Tournaments: over $1,000,000 in prizes across 15 tournaments. Big streamers played along.
Early Access
SUPER PEOPLE launched in Early Access on October 10, 2022 with the new Demolisher class. At its peak 47,392 people played at once. Then came a rough start: phone number checks that kept some players out (dropped on October 19), new players stuck in bot lobbies without being told why, an overpowered Firearms Expert and a paid skin system that felt like gambling (changed within days). Within weeks the player count fell.
SUPER PEOPLE 2
On December 11, 2022 the "Revolution Update" relaunched the game as SUPER PEOPLE 2: crafting was removed, squads became trios and battle pass XP was capped per day. Players who stayed found a faster game, but many who had left never came back.
#SaveSuperPeople is born
Rumors spread that the studio was running out of money. In January 2023 players started posting their best moments under #SaveSuperPeople to bring new people in.
Lights out
In May 2023 the studio announced the end: too few players were left for fair matchmaking. On August 21, 2023 SUPER PEOPLE 2 shut down, and the Discord, once full, went quiet.
A game you never heard of
On October 2, 2024, World of the Dead appeared on Steam: an extraction PvPvE shooter where 24 players fight zombies and bosses, loot what they can and escape through a portal. No marketing, an early build, a team of about 25. A day later a player recognized the developer's name: Wonder People.
#SaveSuperPeople returns
The player shared it in the SUPER PEOPLE Discord, and its admin pinged all 39,000 members. Over 200 people joined on the first day. Within days the trailer and the studio's posts were flooded with #SaveSuperPeople, and Korean gaming press wrote about the hashtag. For two weeks the studio said nothing.
A promise
A one-week demo from October 14 peaked at 67 players. Two days later the studio sent a letter: they were aiming to bring back SUPER PEOPLE 1 in the first half of next year, if they found the funding and developers for it, and asked fans to keep supporting World of the Dead.
"It's a wrap"
A last playtest ran from October 29 to November 4 and peaked at 272 players, most of them SUPER PEOPLE fans. It ended with a farewell and the promise of a new version. That was the last sign of life from World of the Dead.
The comeback beta
In May 2025 the game's director wrote to the players: they had heard how much people wanted SUPER PEOPLE back. A new Global Closed Beta ran from June 18 to 29, 2025, and it brought monsters into the battle royale, the zombies and bosses from World of the Dead.
Back in Early Access
Months after the promised first half of 2025, the game returned to Early Access on September 18, 2025, billed as the Original SUPER PEOPLE and built around stronger anti-cheat. Players who already owned it played for free; new players had to buy a $14.99 entry package, paid back as in-game diamonds, so cheaters couldn't make endless accounts. It peaked at 4,514 players on September 21, less than a tenth of 2022.
What players said
Steam reviews went from two thirds positive in September to under half in October, and the complaints repeated: paying $14.99 for a game that used to be free (some veterans had to buy it again because it had vanished from their library, then saw it go free four weeks later); a player base split by region and camera mode, FPP first in America and Europe and TPP first in Asia, so lobbies filled up with bots; European players landing on Asian servers with lag and desync; cheaters and teaming in solo; crashes and connection errors; and a store full of loot boxes.
Why the comeback didn't last
A battle royale lives on full lobbies, and this one never had them. The $14.99 entry kept newcomers out when almost every rival is free, and ranked matches, open only from level 20 and without bots, were cancelled when too few players queued. Going free to play on October 16 came too late: the average fell from about 2,000 players in September to about 700 in November. On November 5 squads were replaced by duos, and the next day the studio announced the end, citing the market and changing player trends.
Offline for good
The shutdown slipped from February 3 to February 23, and the promised final game mode never came. On February 23, 2026 the servers were switched off for good and the game was removed from Steam. The official game never had community servers, so the client was left with nothing to connect to, even for people who had paid for it.
The community takes over
A small group of volunteers started rebuilding the whole server backend from scratch: login, the lobby, the game servers, a new launcher and fixes for the game's bugs. No company, nobody making money from it.
They tried it. The rest is history, and we're writing the next part together.
Thanks to AndySlaps for "The Rise and Fall of Super People", the long write-up on what went wrong in 2022 that much of this page draws on. Read it