Following various reports of its cancellation, the WWE has officially confirmed that WWE 2K21 is cancelled. The game’s cancellation was made official by the WWE via a tweet from Alex McCarthy of talkSPORT. While the WWE did not give any specific reason for the game’s cancellation, it is likely due to the ongoing pandemic, coupled with the fact that WWE 2K20 (the latest game in the series) was received poorly by critics and fans alike.
We will be sharing details on the future of the WWE 2K franchise as well as some exciting news on Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT.
— #WWE2K23 (@WWEgames) April 24, 2020
Even with 2K21’s cancellation, the franchise likely won’t go away anytime soon. The WWE games Twitter recently published a tweet, saying that details on the future of the WWE 2K franchise will be announced on Monday, 7:00pm (Tuesday, 10:00am in PHT).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg35uxyVpAs
As mentioned above, WWE 2K20’s poor critical reception is a likely reason why the next WWE 2K game was cancelled. Released back in October 2019, WWE 2K20 received poor reviews, with the game being criticized for multiple bugs and poor graphics. Currently, 2K20’s PS4 version has a score of only 43/100 on Metacritic.
A probable reason for the game’s poor quality it that it was made by a different studio. Previous WWE 2K games were made by Yuke’s, but 2K20 was developed by Visual Concepts. The game’s switch to a new developer, coupled with the short development time are likely causes for the game’s buggy state.