Tag: City of Steam

2010’s: Remembering Those Games That Went Out For Gas (And Never Came Back)


The 2010’s brought us closer than ever with developers and that means a lot more instances of people shall we say fudging the truth and maybe being a little more optimistic about their company’s future than was realistically possible. We’ve seen plenty of games in the past decade disappear after promising us that there was no way in hell that they would be gone forever. Just up and vanished in a puff of smoke. Like they got raptured.

Let’s talk about some of them.

Now I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I spent far more time than this piece deserves looking up each game on this list (plus a hundred other titles that didn’t qualify) and scouring their websites/social media just to make sure I had my i’s dotted and my t’s crossed on the developer going dark. I was specifically looking for games/developers who never announced cancellation but just went silent one day and never came back. I also disregarded Kickstarter MMOs because the workload was big enough already. That’s a piece for another day.

If I missed some comment from a dev, it’s because it was shoved in the corner somewhere nobody would ever see it. Also this list isn’t meant to cast shade on any developers, so please; All comments about how I’m disrespecting the development process by making this list can go in the box below this piece. As always, defamation threats to randy@gearboxentertainment.com, c/o Randy Pitchford.

#1: City of Steam: Arkadia (Mechanist Games)

City of Steam was a not-so-successful game that rebranded and relaunched as a much-less-successful game steeped to the brim in microtransactions. It’s hard to believe that Arkadia shut down in early 2016 with the promise that the game was “resting: not retiring.” Boy has City of Steam been in a long sleep because after four years there is no indication that the game is ever coming back. It’s like a permanent form of narcolepsy, also known as death.

Just check out this quote from the website.

“City of Steam certainly isn’t retired, but we’ll need time to reflect on these things. A sequel would have to do justice to the world in a way that honors the original, addresses as many critiques and quirks as possible, and improves or innovates at the same time. It would also have to be good enough to make up for the shortcomings of the original – stuff that no one was really happy with. Rushing into such a massive commitment would be foolish, and would risk destroying the goodwill that still exists for the game.”

Fans of the original City of Steam may be happier that the game is gone for good, since judging by reviews on Mechanist Games’ current lineup the company hasn’t just stayed the line with their predatory microtransactions, they’ve gotten much worse. Mechanist Games’ follow up titles to City of Steam have pretty much all shut down by this point: Spirit Guardian, Heroes of Skyrealm, War Clash, with Game of Sultans remaining. The players were not happy with them, and that is a horrible track record for four years.

Who knows, maybe Mechanist can surprise all of us with a decently built City of Steam follow up that respects its players time and money. I’m not holding out hope.

#2: The Missing Ink (Redbedlam)

The Missing Ink was a pretty basic MMO with a somewhat interesting concept: Player avatars were two dimensional cardboard cutouts existing in a three dimensional world. At one point the folks at Redbedlam took the servers down and announced that a new game design would be coming that same year.

“We’ve taken the TMI servers down for now, but we’ll be back later this year with a BRAND NEW game design – watch this space!”

That post was from January 2014. Whoops. You can actually play Redbedlam’s last title Bedlam, and I posted a whole article about this company last year. There is nothing left of Redbedlam let alone their 2014 dreams of relaunching The Missing Ink, except for one employee taking Steam residuals and probably making a phone call to get investment. He should hit up the guys that invested in the Juicero, they’ll fund anything with a pulse.

#3: Alganon/Line of Defense (3000AD)

I know I’m going to get a Tweet/comment from Derek Smart himself over this post, but I’m going to add it to this list anyway. Alganon shut down its servers for migration in 2017 and never brought them back online. For the record, I’m going to go on a limb and say that I’m probably looking forward to Alganon’s return at least more than any of my readers outside of Derek Smart himself. Probably more than a large portion of the gaming public. I expect my study points for those three years of downtime, Smart. Literally unplayable.

If Alganon comes back I will be greatly surprised and impressed and will be the first person to jump on board with coverage, as right now it feels like the box set of Matlock that I bought on sale at Amazon Prime Day. Yes I’m actively working on it, no I haven’t actually started watching the DVDs yet. The same goes for Line of Defense which is undergoing an engine change and hasn’t posted a new developer diary in over a year. I’m sure Line of Defense will come out at some point in the future, perhaps not my lifetime and published by the third Sonny android model loaded with Derek Smart’s consciousness. It’ll be at the same point where people stop funding Star Citizen’s alpha client in 2342.

We get it; 3000AD is a small company and things take time. I’m just not convinced that they are going to happen at all.

#4: Earthrise (Silent Future)

The Earthrise reboot is totally being developed by Silent Future, a German team who ironically have been completely silent about the game other than to deny the idea that the game is going nowhere when I brought it up a year ago. It has not been taken out back and shot, no matter what common sense and the complete lack of progress over the past eight years since Earthrise first shut down might tell you.

Will Silent Future have the funds to build Earthrise, now a nine year old game that was out of date even back when it launched in 2011, into a product viable for the current market? I’m going to guess no, just judging by their recent releases peaking in the realm of one concurrent player on Steam. I’m also not sure which company is gullible enough to fund development of a reboot of a game that was wholly rejected by the public eight years ago, but then again Justin Roiland’s company bought that Radical Heights trademark so you never know.

#5: All Of Jagex’s Not-RuneScape MMOs

I could probably fill a limosine with all of Jagex’s cancelled MMO projects, so for the sake of time let’s just roll them into one number. Jagex has hinted at more MMOs over the years than I can count (and I can count to four), but every few years the company likes to drop a hint via press release or in a RuneScape update that it has some new IP in the works. What new IP? Who can say. It’s a fantasy game, a sci-fi game, a shooter, an RPG with MMO-like elements. It’s built on Java, it’s built on RuneScript, it’s built on Unreal. It’s literally three days away from beta and cancelled.

What isn’t it? Getting published. We’ve been having this conversation for over a decade now about how Jagex needs to stop treating its new games like hobby projects. Can Jagex recreate that RuneScape magic? Or push another product to publication? As literally the only person still running a Funorb-oriented website into 2010, I hope so.

#6: Lineage Eternal/Project TL (NCSoft)

But Conrad, I hear you say, Lineage Eternal is definitely coming out! Nah. Lineage Eternal is going so well that the game is ahead of schedule according to NCSoft, which is naturally why it has been delayed and changed numerous times over the course of the last decade. I’d be more ready and willing to believe NCSoft’s promise that Lineage Eternal would be going into closed beta testing this year were it not for the fact that they have literally made this very statement in quarterly reports for at least seven years. That’s not an exaggeration.

It’s been nine years since Lineage Eternal was first announced with the first round of cancelled beta tests dating back to 2013. Now that Lineage is quickly becoming the Duke Nukem Forever of MMORPGs, maybe it’s best if Gearbox buys out the property and Randolph Pitchford helms its launch. Technically speaking he can’t do any worse.

#7: Black Prophecy Tactics: Nexus Conflict (Gamigo)

Black Prophecy Tactics was to be the prequel to the failed MMO Black Prophecy, a game that fared so poorly in its life that it shut down barely a year after launch. Black Prophecy Tactics meanwhile was deep into its second beta test in September 2012 when everything went dark. To the best of my knowledge and research, the cancellation of Black Prophecy Tactics was never formally announced; it’s certainly obvious considering all of the MMORPG catalog websites that still to this day show the game as “in development.” No press releases, no announcements, nothing. Just a poof and roughly three people wondering what ever happened to this game.

Gamigo: The pinnacle of communication.

#8: UFO Online (Gamigo)

Gamigo-published games have a habit of just up and ghosting us. I couldn’t tell you for sure if UFO Online ever fully launched, but I do know that it was announced in 2010 and then went into beta in 2013. Again, we’re dealing with 2010-2015 era Gamigo who tended to treat their game launches like they were the location of CIA spies; not for distribution to the public.

I’m willing to put my money on the notion that UFO Online never launched, but if it did it ghosted us like last night’s Tinder date.

#9: Dynastica (Dynastica Ltd.)

I want to know who the hell is paying for some of these websites. Dynastica went into its second closed beta phase on April 4, 2011 and subsequently went completely dark. For some reason unknown to man on Earth and God in the sky, the website is still online albeit mostly nonfunctioning. Signups are closed, the server is presumably long gone, but the domain and the website are still live.

I can only presume that it’s being paid for by some preloaded Paypal account and nobody’s actually paying attention to it.

#10: Bounty Hounds Online (Suba Games)

Ah Suba Games, the only publisher who can beat Gamigo for the early-mid 2010’s race to “who can advertise their games the least” awards. The prize is a bunch of shuttered games. Bounty Hounds Online has never been cancelled, at least not in an official capacity or in a way that is still accessible today. Suba Games seemed excited to get Bounty Hounds Online approved through Steam Greenlight and the title seemed to be enjoying some attention during the closed beta phases.

And then everything died. We’ll never know what became of Bounty Hounds Online (other than the obvious that it has been cancelled) but like every other game on this list we didn’t even get the courtesy of a goodbye kiss.

#11: Land of Britain (Potato Killer Studios)

I’ve heard worse studio names than Potato Killer Studios but gosh darnit I can’t think of any of them off the top of my head. Land of Britain is a new Dark Age of Camelot at least in the sense that it was going to deliver three factions, innovative gathering, crafting, PvP combat, PvE, and KvK, perhaps a little TlC, CBS, and AT&T as well. What it won’t deliver is a game, since the domain has been dead since June 2018 and is now for sale. You can get it for nearly $4 grand. Don’t buy it.

Outside of Land of Britain, Potato Killer was also supposed to launch a TCG tie-in called Fangold. That never happened either. Their last post is in December 2016 thanking Microsoft for the BizSpark Plus program. Money well spent.

#12: Eden Falling (Razor Edge Games)

Eden Fell and Eden Died, and as such will not be Eden Finished. Eden Falling is a turn based RPG that promises to bring a tabletop experience to the online gaming realm. What it doesn’t bring is a finished game or a present developer, since Eden Falling hasn’t had a press release or a dev diary since 2017. A trailer was released in late 2018 but otherwise the team has been pretty mum. Mums the word.

The website is still online and so are the forums if you want to discuss off-market Xanax and pirated copies of Madden with the hundreds of bot posts that are the only accounts still active.

#13: Lux (Ignis)

Lux is a hand drawn MMO from Chimera (Ignis) and sure the website has been updated with a 2020 copyright but there’s also a link to the company’s Google+ account and that hasn’t been a thing since April.  April, right? Who even remembers Google Plus? I forgot about it a week after Google stopped hardcoding it into Youtube. Lux had a failed Kickstarter campaign back in 2016 to put the title on PC, Xbox, PS4, and Mac. Accompanying the game’s campaign was one for a graphic novel tie-in that despite raising over the paltry goal with 23 backers was also canned. The Kickstarter tells backers to stay tuned for more information.

We all know where this is going. The website lists “pre-orders soon,” and if you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. The last sign of life I could find was in 2018 when after nearly two years of inactivity someone posted a link to the Lux website on their Facebook page. Two years to post a link for a website for a game that is absolutely not ripping off Don’t Starve.

The most entertaining part of Lux’s history is that if you look at their Twitter account the last thing that they posted about the game is an expression of excitement that the team is working with Ignis to continue development. In March 2017. Someone decided to use the account five months later in August to ask a couple questions about a rented Conan Exiles server and how to change harvesting rates.

City of Steam: Resting, Not Retired


City of Steam was a rather highly spoken of game here at MMO Fallout from years back, although it only shut down about a year ago, but I’ve found myself thinking about the game every now and then. As it happens, I stumbled onto the website for no real reason only to find that it is still operational, with a message to fans of the game: We are resting, not retired. As it turns out, the team over at Mechanist Games still wants to do proper by the game via a sequel.

City of Steam certainly isn’t retired, but we’ll need time to reflect on these things. A sequel would have to do justice to the world in a way that honors the original, addresses as many critiques and quirks as possible, and improves or innovates at the same time. It would also have to be good enough to make up for the shortcomings of the original – stuff that no one was really happy with. Rushing into such a massive commitment would be foolish, and would risk destroying the goodwill that still exists for the game.

When I originally talked about City of Steam back in 2012 (my how time flies), I had nothing but praise to heap unto Mechanist Games. Following several successful closed beta weekends, Mechanist announced an unholy union with R2 Games and turned it into the form that ultimately killed it: A watered down grindfest with casino-style blinking lights and everything geared toward a horrendously opportunistic cash shop. The prior fans abandoned ship and City of Steam became a ghost town.

The thought of a City of Steam sequel seems pretty interesting, hopefully Mechanist Games can figure out where the title went wrong last time and realize what was looking to be an incredible title.

City of Steam Is Shutting Down This Month


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City of Steam developer Mechanist Games has announced that services for the MMO will shut down later this month. The game launched in 2013 and was named MMO Fallout’s ‘Most Disappointing MMO of the Year,” due to a partnership with R2 Games that saw many of the game’s mechanics simplified or outright removed and the overall meta-game transformed into a mobile grinder with energy and an overwhelming cash shop.

The announcement focuses on the declining support of UNITY in browsers.

But we’re sorry to say that this chapter of The New Epoch is coming to an end. A number of factors went into this decision, the decline of Unity support in the browser is one of them – Google Chrome no longer supports NPAPI plugins like the Unity Webplayer, and Microsoft’s next browser, Edge, won’t either.

While City of Steam was relaunched as Arkadia, the changes made to the game between closed and open beta unfortunately kept many players from coming back. The game has been in maintenance mode since November 2014 and no one has bothered to moderate the forums since at least August of last year, leaving nearly dozens of pages of spam.

(Source: City of Steam)

City of Steam Merging US Servers


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City of Steam developer Mechanist Games has announced that the three US servers will be merged into one, bringing gamers together and dealing with waning populations. The merger is set to take place on October 21st and is expected to require four to five hours of downtime. Players from servers 2 and 3 will receive compensation in the form of subscription time and resources to compensate for the head start that players on server 1 received by launching several months ahead of the other two.

European players can fire an email off to Mechanist Games to receive a similar compensation.

(Source: City of Steam)

City of Steam Hits Steam Today


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Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic. Following the launch of City of Steam: Arkadia last year on web browsers, through Kongregate, and via an available micro-client, Mechanist Games will be launching their MMO on Steam today at approximately noon EST. Arkadia was voted on to Steam through the powers invested in Greenlight, Valve’s crowd-voting platform of approval. In an announcement on the official website, Mechanist noted that certain features had either become obsolete or were deemed unsuitable for the Steam environment, such as the mobile-inspired power limitations. The team admits that 2013 was a “downright rotten year” and, having recovered somewhat, continues to make amends.

For Mechanist, 2014 is all about making the best game, doing what we originally intended, keeping our promises no matter how long ago they were. The two most important ones we have to fix as soon as possible are paragon supporter promises and steam greenlight promises. We’re doing both right now, actually started immediately after new year.

The City of Steam Steam launch coincides with the release of update 2.4 and the launch of a brand new server, and will also introduce a bevvy of content originally anticipated for the previous version’s Steam launch. New pets, new vehicles, Steam achievements, hats, dungeons, jetpacks, and character customizations, with Valve-inspired pets and vehicles among the lot.

Both updates go live at 9am Pacific.

(Source: City of Steam)

Rant: Disappointment In Arkadia


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Back when City of Steam launched its open beta, removing features, emphasizing the cash shop, increasing failure rates on modifications, and more. As someone who loved the game’s closed beta period enough that I not only loved enough to throw my own money into very early in closed beta, I partnered with Mechanist Games to share beta keys, I was particularly disappointed. After open beta on R2Games fell hard and we found out about City of Steam: Arkadia, I had hoped with every fiber of my being that the reason the game went so astray was because of publisher pressure.

How wrong I was. I opened Arkadia in hopes that it would bring back the special moments that I shared with closed beta, but instead I found that the game had fully made the transformation into every other Chinese free to play browser title. I apologize in advance if this rant jumps from topic to topic without a proper segue. I don’t know where to start, so let’s dive in.

Direct trading between players does not exist, still, rather you are forced to use the auction house which only deals in Electrum (real money currency). Previously instanced dungeons are now open world areas where players stumble over each other to complete intricate puzzles like killing twenty enemies and collecting five shillings. Luckily for you, and the other random people you’ll be sharing the dungeon with, groups of mobs respawn just as quickly as you can defeat them, often times faster.

And you will never be under-powered or outmatched. Thanks to fishing and mining, which serves no other purpose other than throwing mass quantities of ability and talent points at you, I probably have enough ability points at level 8 to sustain me to the level cap, and enough talent points that I never have to worry about running out. Even without these upgrades, I found myself constantly emptying my inventory of the hundreds upon hundreds of potions given during quests, as drops, and I haven’t had a reason to use any of them. I don’t think my health has dropped below 97% for the entire time I’ve been playing, and that includes solo’ing boss battles on the harder mode for that dungeon.

Apparently Mechanist Games realized that somewhere along the line, City of Steam had its soul stripped and churned into mulch, because they added the ability for the game to play itself. A built in goldfarming bot! Your character will walk himself through the dungeons, kill enemies with pinpoint precision, use abilities, pick up shillings and whatever else drops, use mana potions as they are needed, find his way to the boss, kill them, and the game will then log you out of the dungeon. I believe that experience and shillings are capped per run, because I hit the auto-attack button and went to sleep just to see what would happen, only to wake up to find my character still running around killing stuff but without any notable increase in experience or cash from the previous night. I haven’t checked my achievements, I probably have a good few thousand gun kills racked up over that seven hours.

Then I came across two of the game’s new mini-games. One game mode is a giant Pacman level, where you run around a maze with knee-high walls and the game throws experience at you. The other game mode has you smashing eggs that drop massive quantities of shillings. There-in lies the problem, that the game gives you everything and does everything for you. Arkadia feels like it is two degrees away from handing me a book and some crayons and telling me to color and stay quiet while it plays itself.

Now that I’ve finished shouting myself blue in the face, I want to end this rant as I normally try to do: On a positive note. The silver lining in all of this is the admission that the US version of Arkadia was essentially built up on short notice with a tiny crew. There are multiple versions of City of Steam, each meant to cater to their respective region, which hopefully means that the English game will be molded to better focus on American and European customers.

For COS English, unfortunately, we are very short of hand for now. The English version will be started from Dave, Ethan, and Shirley. I believe it will get better and better and we will have more resources to be invested, more localization, more specialized cosmetics, and more and more cool stuff which I don’t know.

One can dream.

City of Steam: Arkadia Coming December 4th


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City of Steam may already be dead and buried, at least as far as the English servers under R2Games are concerned, but that hasn’t stopped the folks at Mechanist Games from continuing work on its sleeker, slimmer replacement. In a news post published today, Mechanist Games has revealed that the launch date of City of Steam: Arkadia is December 4th at 9pm EST.

CoS: Arkadia will bring in a slew of new features such as Mercenaries, Alchemy, Fishing, etc, along with redesigned dungeons and improved gameplay. We do think it has a good chance to reach a wider player demographic than before and satisfy the appetites of our loyal fans.

Check it out when the game goes live next Wednesday.

(Source: City of Steam)

MMOrning Shots: Burning Down The House


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Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from City of Steam, more specifically the upcoming relaunch titled Arkadia. With the R2Games servers shutting down tomorrow, now is as good a time as any to get excited about the reboot. Check out our coverage when City of Steam 2.0 goes live.

City of Steam Is A Chilling Lesson For Indies


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City of Steam is a heavy contender for the most disappointing MMO of 2013, and even if the upcoming relaunch and branding as Arkadia goes well, the story of the folks at Mechanist Games will no doubt find its way into the nightmares of indie gamers everywhere. Much like how we use viruses and bacteria to observe evolution in its quickest form, City of Steam has proven itself an excellent example of a developer going from beloved to dismissed in zero seconds flat. Where some MMOs take years for publisher or investor pressure to simplify their gameplay and treat customers not as long term friends to be treated with respect but as open wallets ready for the bilking, City of Steam managed it under R2Games in the simple cycle from closed to open beta.

I hate to say I told you so, so I won’t. That honor goes to the community who spent countless hours explaining why a partnership with R2Games was a bad idea and warning that when time came that City of Steam was gutted for parts and everything had a price tag on it, that they wouldn’t be there to help pick up the pieces. And they weren’t. When City of Steam launched into open beta and everyone’s fears of a partnership with R2 Games were realized, they simply threw their hands up and departed. There was no big hubbub, no boycotts like with City of Heroes, not the kind of angry outburst you’d expect, people simply left. Anything that could be said had already been discussed over the previous months, and by this point there was nothing left to say.

The good news in all of this is that Mechanist Games always had a kill switch, an option that very few indie developers have once they partner with an outside publisher, and it’s obvious by the lack of updates since open beta that they pulled it pretty quickly. As a gamer, I can only hope that Mechanist Games realized the problem before their customers started leaving in massive numbers, and not after. I can dream that every single request by R2Games to remove features, monetize, increase failure rates, and make the game more cash shop reliant were fought tooth and nail every step of the way, and I can picture that when Mechanist Games bought back their publishing rights, it was done with a generous helping of profanity.

City of Steam has what many other games will never get, a second chance. An opportunity to right their wrongs and gain back the goodwill of their audience, one that appears to be more than willing to forgive them of their trespasses. I hope they make use of it.

But that’s just my opinion.

Mechanist Games Will Compensate Players


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As plenty of you already know, City of Steam’s English servers under R2 Games are shutting down November 21st. In a press release by Mechanist Games sent out today, the developer has revealed plans to compensate backers and restore the faith of their community. While not all of the details are final, when City of Steam: Arkadia launches in November, supporters will find their Electrum restored.

We will recharge all original supporter accounts their total Electrum’s worth on the new Mechanist servers. We want to restore faith in our players, especially those early adopters who believed in us.

Unfortunately, characters created on R2’s servers will not be brought over to Arkadia, however accounts will be compensated based on how far they managed to get in the original game.

Mechanist will be opening new servers, not continuing R2’s servers. But to honor the loyalty of returning players, compensation will be given on these new servers based on the specs of their old characters. We have a strong desire to give everyone the fresh new start this game deserves, but we also really want to thank the loyal players who stuck with City of Steam and welcome them home, whether they spent Electrum or not.

Gamers in City of Steam’s other territories will be happy to know that their service will be mostly uninterrupted. Foreign language versions of City of Steam will also be upgraded to Arkadia, but will continue to enjoy their current publisher.

Those game versions are not affected by the English version’s publishing handover. They can continue playing now, and enjoy the improvements that come along with City of Steam: Arkadia when it is ready. And just like any other version upgrade, all the non-English language versions will also receive it.

(Source: City of Steam)