Masthead's previous MMO, Earthrise, whose tech is or was being used for Interplay's Project V13, is now shutting down, failing to find the funds to convert to free-to-play.<blockquote>“One year after the launch of the game, we have decided to stop the Earthrise servers. Earthrise was released too early and did not meet the expectations of its fans” said Atanas Atanasov, Director of Masthead Studios. “We did our best to revive the game in 2011, but the time was not enough to keep up with the user requirements. There is a huge interest in high quality open world sandbox MMORPGs, unfortunately the big publishers do not show any interest in the genre. It is unfortunate that low budget companies like ours are trying to bring innovativeness in the already saturated MMO market. I hope that one day an independent studio will be able to release the long anticipated open world sandbox MMO, which everyone is talking about, but no one is making. We tried, but did not succeed. We would like to apologize to those who were disappointed from Earthrise and to thank everyone who supported us during the years."</blockquote>I wouldn't hold out too much hope for V13.
I guess it isn't much of a surprise, but it is a shame. The gaming industry is rough for small developers.
The game was horrible plain and simple. I am glad it failed and I am glad that masthead is not going to be involved in fallout online.
That's a shame, I was really looking forward to playing it when it went free to play. For a good portion of last year I was under the impression that you couldn't play it outside of Europe since the publishing deal they had made it sound like it was exclusive to that continent until a publisher could be found for other areas (maybe this was the case, I'm still not sure). Here's hoping they can get back on their feet though. Edit: After reading through old press releases I see now that initially Iceberg published the MMO in Europe only but in June of last year went worldwide via digital distribution.
The game seemed to be rather plain and simple, that's for sure. Not enough funding plus a MMO, can't really go below that (outside Activision and Bethesda, this is true).
They had it coming. You don't start a MMO project without a portfolio of older games. It's like chewing a hot potato.
