XD I knew it will happen after Riot bought the studio, farawell
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Damn :(
...even after a major reboot of the game engine...
Custom engines claim another victim.
Game dev is hard. Game engines are apparently impossible and cost prohibitive these days, unless licensed out en masse. They're killing studios and franchises left and right.
Let this be a lesson : do not re-develop your game engine when it's almost done already.
You can't delay your game until it's perfect as if you were Shigeru Miyamoto. You need to get something playable with a solid base out the dole, and iterate with feedback.
That's really sad. Can we at least have their stuff now? I mean it would be a waste to not open-source all the code and assets they've developed and make them available under MIT, CC and similar licenses.
Mismanaged out of existence. Should have just released, got some funds flowing, dealt with complaints, and then fixed them as time went on.
Shouldn't have wasted all the time with a reboot of the engine, as that just further endangered them.
Really disappointed. Was gearing up to be a more complete game than Minecraft was. Could've been mod friendly out the gate too.
The silver lining is they didn't steal people's money with empty promises like TUG.
I'm not surprised, the opportunity that Hytale devs were given had been squandered thoughtlessly. I believe the game's fate would've been different with a playable EA version. One that generated sales while building hype with major patches. With a game that has good bones, this style of development works rather well.
If Project Zomboid or Factorio didn't have early access, both would fail too. This really sounds like project management problem
Yeah, I agree, this is purely due to poor project management decisions. They're scope seemed to grow into an unmanageable thing, this is likely a first time project... So this team didn't have the knowledge to make a solid plan of action.
As for Project Zomboid, as a person who paid for an early access version when it first landed...That game wouldn't be where its at without early and steady funding.
Right? And Indie Stone had the worst luck of any indie dev out there and yet, against all odd, still release such a phenomenal game.
This is basically exactly what Vintage Story does. And it's working extremely well for them
I'm sorry to see this happen. I honestly thought it was dead a long time ago, but still sad to learn it didn't make it.
Oh no, seriously?! Damn... all these years of waiting for many people... what a damn disappointment.
I guess the scope was too ambitious. Economy is not doing that well so AAA studios don't like to take any risks. Both this and Blizzard's survival game was cancelled. It is sad that so many developer hours are wasted on these projects and we get nothing out of it. It would be amazing if these games would get released as open source for someone else to finish it.
I think that's the longest way I've ever seen of "Our parent studio decided this game isn't financially feasible and told us to stop".
This project is definitely a parent studio decided that they didn't like the game, so they decided to cancel it. Especially after Vintage Story proved that that type of game will sell, not at the metrics that a studio like Riot would want, but it would sell.
Judging by the graphics in it that they've released so far, it definitely looks like they were a good portion into development as well, which is a shame.
This project is definitely a parent studio decided that they didn’t like the game, so they decided to cancel it.
If you've read the past few development updates, it's very likely that the team leadership is at fault and not Riot. They basically spent the last ~3 years moving the game to a new engine and the most they had to show was some concept art. I hoped that they were developing in secret to have some big reveal down the line, but it seems like the game really was going nowhere.
I'm reading it more like the longest "we blew our budget and had no game" post.
I think you might need to reread the rest of my comment, because I think we're on the same mentality.
I've read the article, and I read the last development update, which seemed to be leading in the direction that they had fully intended on making a project.
Their previous update is actually what made me have the mentality that I currently have, not the article you posted.
The previous update was a progress update saying that they were beginning internal testing and they released images of what looked to be a fairly progressed game. And they had seemed super hopeful for the future. That is not an update that screams this project's on the urge of being shut down.
I stand firm with what I said that this game would have had potential. And while they didn't make the greatest development decisions, I don't believe the choice to shutter the project was their choice. That's a lot of wasted effort for a team like that, and if they lasted this long the choice to close wasn't theirs.
It's just the bean counters didn't like how much it was costing for the game. So once again, what would have been a great addition to the gaming market was squandered due to greed.
This is also why the indie market is starting to take off as well as it is again. Because unlike big corporations and studios, if an indie game starts to show signs of maybe not making a bunch of money, they don't give a shit and they release the product anyway. Where if a large studio game starts to falter, the parent studio just shuts it down.
Hypixel Minecraft was terribly monitized and had illegal gambling on it.
Good they are down, we don't need more EAs or ubislops
A difficult update, but not unexpected after all this time. 10 years is a helluva timeline to release nothing 🥲
Honestly a surprised they weren't shut down sooner, and a shame they couldn't make basically a Minecraft built for mods work.
Nice they're getting severance, but a shame Riot couldn't manage to pivot them to something that didn't require putting out resume...
I'll say it a million times: they tried to copy several games but ignored the development structure that made them successful: release a minimum version and work on it alongside the community.
A lot of people saw this coming since when they announced that they were completely restarting development of their engine.
They let perfect be the enemy of good enough and so not a single build ever saw public release.
So this is how I learn that the team that run that Minecraft server were apparently making a Minecraft knockoff with Riot. Okay then.
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