Author: Admin

Legends of Aria Hits Steam August 6


If you need Legends of Aria to release on Steam and preferably before August 7, then you have hit a stroke of very specific luck.

Citadel Studios announced today that the global launch of the hit MMO Legends of Aria is coming sooner than you think: August 6. Legends of Aria bills itself as a modern take on classic MMORPGs such as Ultima Online and Eve Online, and is a living breathing world shaped by its players. While much of the game world is safe from the harsh life of open world PvP, lawless regions still exist inhabited by those looking to make your day that much worse.

“Not only have we added a new playable skillset in the Bard and a whole new armor and weapon enchanting system to make the crafters in our community even more important, but we’re making the world of Aria a much friendlier place to live,” said Derek Brinkmann, CEO. “We’re ecstatic to finally be launching Legends of Aria on Steam after so much hard work and love were poured into the game. We cannot wait for MMO players of all sorts to join us on our journey.”

Legends of Aria will launch into Early Access on Steam on August 6. New features include the bard class as well as equipment enhancement, rulesets, a fresh start server, an optional premium subscription, quality of life improvements, and much more. Check out the official website for more information.

Whatever Happened To: RedBedlam Ltd.


As I delve deep into the “whatever happened to those people” part of our ten year anniversary, one game caught my memory like a flash of lightning in a bowl of chocolate pudding. Whatever happened to that game The Missing Ink?

Actually that answer is obvious: It was shut down. The Missing Ink shut down its servers way back in January 2014 without much of a blurb from the press at the time. The closure was not meant to be permanent as developer Redbedlam announced that they would be retooling the game and keeping the two dimensional paper cutout characters while expanding on the three dimensional world and the things that it offered. That never happened, The Missing Ink never relaunched and for that matter it doesn’t look like Redbedlam ever acknowledged the game’s existence after January 2014.

So what the hell happened to RedBedlam? Thankfully for us, the company is a UK business and as such its records are on public display over at Companies House. A few months after this announcement, RedBedlam posted its fiscal results for the year ending May 31 showing net assets of £136,838. In October 2015, RedBedlam would release the game Bedlam, a first person shooter with a rather odd art style. The game would peak at 315 concurrent users on Steam but not until 2018.

By 2016 these total assets would plummet to £21,385, which appears to be where the company starts circling the drain. Bedlam receives its last patch on November 4, 2015. Fast forward another year and the assets drop to £3,072. By this point the company is running as a shell corporation, as the fiscal reports show that there is only one employee hired, down from five in 2016.

Companies House later filed to strike RedBedlam off of the official record. Apparently someone was around to contest this, as the proposal was removed with cause shortly thereafter. By the end of the 2018 fiscal year, RedBedlam was a dry husk; its fiscal earnings showing a net negative in assets and zero employees still on record.

Of RedBedlam’s eight officers, only one remains: Kerry John Fraser-Robinson, who is presumably keeping the company up and running in name only to pull in what few sales Bedlam is offering and to make phone calls in hopes of getting some investors on board. Otherwise it looks like this is the end for RedBedlam.

Whatever Happened To: Insel Games?


It’s been nearly a year and a half since we talked about Insel Games here at MMO Fallout, so I thought why not check in and see if they even still exist?

The last time we talked about Insel Games was in February 2018 when the company did something very, very stupid. Insel Games popped up a few years back to crowdfund the western releases of Wild Buster and Guardians of Ember, two top-down ARPG titles that performed fine enough on Indiegogo. Wild Buster raked in roughly $13k and Guardians of Ember a slightly more impressive $80k. Wild Buster even boasted Serious Sam and Duke Nukem among their character roster.

I’ll let Insel Games describe themselves:

“InselGames is a small independent publisher of online games based in Malta. Members of our team have worked on games such as Last Chaos, Fiesta Online, S4 League, Florensia, Everquest 2 and Planetside 2. Our goal is to bring you the best independent MMOs with a fair business model (TLDR: no pay-to-win)!”

I know what you’re thinking: What was this big stupid thing that Insel Games did? Well, the CEO got caught attempting to manipulate Steam reviews for Wild Buster after the title didn’t meet initial expectations and Valve gave the company the big boot. All of Insel Games titles were removed and the developer was banned from the store front. However it happened, Insel Games lost or gave up the publishing rights to both Guardians of Ember and Wild Buster. Guardians of Ember transferred to GameForge while Wild Buster renamed itself Champion of Titans and moved over to IDC Games.

You might be thinking that Insel Games just dissolved and died off, what with their getting banned from the largest PC game store and losing what few titles they had publishing rights to, and you would kinda be right. Right now the Insel Games website has two titles listed under “Our Games” with no mention of their prior published titles. The first game is World of Fishing which some of you may vaguely remember. World of Fishing shut down two years ago with players receiving free keys to Guardians of Ember as compensation. Whoops.

The other game appears to be titled MAD: Revenge of Narc. The website notes that this is a working title, but I’m assuming that it too is dead. I can’t find any mention online of an MMO with this name, and reverse searching the three screenshots on their website also doesn’t turn up any results. The Malta business registry similarly doesn’t have any status listed for the company.

So it looks like Insel Games is basically dead, assuming their domain isn’t simply waiting for whatever funds have already been invested in it to dry out.

MMO Fallout Turns Ten, And I Remembered Its Birthday


MMO Fallout is ten years old this week, and unlike the last three years I actually remembered its birthday this time around. Honestly I wish I had more prepared for this momentous occasion that is basically to my own enjoyment and everyone else’s annoyance, but in the meantime enjoy some snapshots of MMO Fallout’s early years.

I will remember you…

Will you remember me…

Don’t let your life pass you by

And then everything went downhill from there until we get to the modern day design of MMO Fallout as shown below:

Kickstarted MMO Edengrad Is Returning Thanks To Share Sales


Edengrad

Everyone’s favorite crowdfunded MMO Edengrad is coming back! Or at least that’s the plan.

For those of you not familiar with the game Edengrad, this game was Kickstarted to the tune of £41k by developer Huckleberry Games who released the title into Early Access on Steam in April 2017 and promptly stopped actively supporting it in December of the same year due to an apparent lack of funding. The servers have continued running for that time period but no active updates have been deployed in over a year and a half now.

The folks at Huckleberry Games posted a very cryptic message back in December 2018 that they were coming back, but nothing emerged until this June when Wyborcza posted some news about the company. It looks like Huckleberry has sold 1.5 million Zloty in shares, approximately $395,000 US Dollars. That money, according to the article, will go toward continuing development on Edengard as well as new titles.

“The F series issue was a very important step in the company’s history, thanks to which the company will be able to continue working on our flagship product, Edengrad, and support the development of new promising projects. companies, they believed in it and together with us they want to develop it, and in return we will provide them with new, better quality, “said president Patryk Borowski, quoted in the communiqué.

Developer Huckleberry Games has been promising updates via the Steam forums for several months now, only time will tell if they can actually come through on those statements.

[Video] Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey


Today’s video was sent to us by Panache Digital Games and features Patrice Désilets discussing the concepts of the upcoming title Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey with various experts outside of the gaming industry. The first episode, above, features an interview with anthropologist Dr. Niobe Thompson to talk about survival 10 million years ago in Neogene, Africa where the game takes place.

New videos will release every three weeks. Ancestors is set for launch on PC on August 27 via the Epic Game Store with console release coming in December.

In Plain English: Court Throws Out Jagex Ban Lawsuit After Five Days


Today’s In Plain English is going to be a short one, but you’ll understand why when you see that the gist of it is about six sentences long. It comes to us from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and involves everyone’s favorite developer of RuneScape: Jagex. Along with their parent company Shanghai Fukong, Jagex last week was sued in Pennsylvania court by one Amro Elansari, who is alleging that Jagex muted him without reason. The lawsuit goes on to claim that the UK developer refused to provide an explanation and denied Elansari’s request for an appeal. Elansari’s suit alleges violations of due process, free speech, and human rights.

Elansari was granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis, fancy legal speak for nulling filing fees, however the court took some umbrage with his claims. Judge Kearney noted that Elansari’s claims of constitutional violations were implausible, adding that the first amendment and its constitutional free speech guarantees do not restrict private entities. More so, the fifth amendment due process clause also does not apply to private companies.

As such, Elansari’s lawsuit has been dismissed just five days after being filed. Elansari cannot make any further constitutional or federal claims however if he decides to bring the lawsuit back on state charges in state court, he absolutely may do so.

As always, MMO Fallout is hosting the relevant dockets at our expense at the Google Drive. As the lawsuit was filed pro se, MMO Fallout has removed some personal contact details from the documents for the sake of the plaintiff.

Whatever Happened To: Hello Kitty Online (Again!)


Hello Kitty Online. It can’t have been too long since I last updated everyone on what is going on with this quirky little game for kids who absolutely do not view this website. But Connor, I hear you shout into your computer, if you bothered to check your own post history once in a while you’d notice that you haven’t written about Hello Kitty Online since 2013!

So chalk this one up as another ball that MMO Fallout dropped. Hello Kitty Online isn’t the kind of game I would normally cover here at MMO Fallout, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the game has been offline for two years and I think only PC Gamer and MMOBomb have noticed that the game has been offline for the better part of the past two years. It’s not surprising as Sanrio had stopped supporting the title way back in 2012 and it looks like they just let the game drift off into the distance until 2017 when the servers went offline and never came back up.

Here’s to Hello Kitty Online. You snuck out the back door and very few noticed.

A Tale in the Desert: Tale 8 Ends August 2019


A Tale in the Desert has announced the end of Tale 8 and the beginning of Tale 9, both set to commence on August 30, 2019. Unlike other MMOs, A Tale in the Desert resets its players every tale, in this case after 18 months. Players begin a new world with new characters and changes requested by the players or added in by the developer Desert Nomad Studios.

“It’s been a fantastic 18 months and the great news is that Tale 9 will soon be upon us. For the first time, the end of a Tale and the start of the next will be on the same day! Tale 8 Amnesty will take place on the 24th and 25th of August, with an AMA with the developers across both days in game and on discord. We can’t wait to share with you some great secrets from the Tale that have been missed! See you then”

A Tale in the Desert launched in 2003 and has retained a small but sustainable number of subscribers. Set in ancient Egypt, ATITD features no combat but sets players up with various tests that they must overcome in order to progress. Tests involve various activities such as breeding scarabs, creating art for others to vote on, building puzzles, and convincing other players to elect you.

Source: A Tale in the Desert

[NM] Bethesda Introduces More Non-Cosmetic Cash Shop Items


It’s a new day, and that means another opportunity for Bethesda to remind us that the company can’t be trusted. The latest update that hit live servers just yesterday (July 16) introduces a new item to the Fallout 76 cash shop: Scrap kits.

Yes, scrap kits. Another instance of Bethesda selling items for real money in order to fix an inconvenience that they purposely added into the game in order to set up the player base to later spend real money. As the official website states:

“Scrap Kits are new one-time use items that you can use to scrap all the junk you’re currently carrying and immediately deliver the resulting components to your Stash. They can be used anytime, anywhere, without needing to visit a workbench or your Stash. You can unlock Scrap Kits in the Atomic Shop using the Atoms you’ve purchased or those you’ve earned by completing in-game Challenges. Upon purchasing Scrap Kits, you will be able to select which of your characters you’d like to receive them. Any Kits you own will appear under the Misc. tab in your Pip-Boy and can be activated there. Upon using a Scrap Kit, it will be consumed.”

And just to remind everyone, I have included a link to the Gamestop article where Pete Hines states that the Fallout atomic shop would be cosmetic stuff.

“All the content we ever put out for Fallout 76–all the DLC, all the post-launch stuff–is going to be free. That’s important. And to say, the Atomic shop is cosmetic stuff. To make sure folks understand–look there’s a line. There are people who have crossed it, but we’re going to stay on the right side of it in terms of the things you can spend money on and how this stuff works and what you’re getting for your $60,” Hines said. “That you know, when they put out new content or features or whatever, I’m getting that stuff for free. That feels right.”

The update comes alongside the addition of a greenhouse building that players can purchase and plop down, one that does not actually allow you to grow plants inside of it.

More Fallout coverage as it appears.