Following an early access beta phase, the game was released for Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox One on October 5, 2017.

The company later announced a sequel, The Culling 2, which was released in July 2018, amid the popularity of Fortnite Battle Royale.

The game received a negative reception from players, leading Xaviant to pull the sequel from marketplaces, and instead restart work on adapting The Culling as a free-to-play title.

The Culling was envisioned to be the first standalone battle royale game on Steam, with the potential to tap into the esports market.

[5][6] In mid-June 2018, Xaviant announced it was preparing to release a sequel, The Culling 2, which it had been working on since stopping development of the first game.

[7] The announcement came around the same time that leaked images from The Culling 2 had been discovered, with fans of the first game criticizing the look and feel for being too close to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

Van Veld said the choice to make the game more similar to Battlegrounds was to reflect the trend that the battle royale genre had seen over the last two years.

Additionally, Xaviant stated they would instead retake up development and support of the original game towards making it a free-to-play title.

[14] Xavient announced in March 2019 that revenue from the rebooted The Culling was not sufficient to cover their ongoing expenses, and were thus planning on closing down the servers in May 2019; offline portions of the game would otherwise remain playable.