“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.”
The MMO industry every year becomes a less friendly place for independent developers, thanks in part to the Rule of Saturation. Unlike Square Enix, who have the coffers and investors to pour millions of dollars and well over a year to bring Final Fantasy XIV to a state that could be called enjoyable, Masthead Studios does not have the same kind of funding and as such has announced today that Earthrise will close down.
In a post on the official forums, The Editor mentions that the developer was unable to find an investor, but that this may not be the end for Earthrise:
“We don’t abandon the Earthrise project completely. But it will be postponed for better times. We even thought to continue providing services for game for free, but it would still require investments. Instead of that we decided to focus on other projects, but it will be Ostiak, who can give additional information. Meanwhile we will keep the Earthrise forums and we will still use them. I hope one day I will put much better news there.”
Earthrise had a free to play version that partially launched in December for previous account holders, and then the servers went offline between December 8th and January 7th for server maintenance.
(source: Earthrise Forums)
MMO Fallout 