Rising costs, funding withdrawals and poor early access sales all factors in this “impossible decision,” the studio says
Ah, man, this one really stings. League Of Geeks, the developers behindArmelloand the upcomingSolium Infernumremake, have announced they’ve had to pause the development of their spaceship colony roguelikeJumplight Odyssey"indefinitely" as the studio faces mass redundancies. Over 50% of staff have been affected, including the entire Jumplight Odyssey team, and part of their publishing and operations teams.
In a statement posted toXwitterlast night, studio co-founders and directors Trent Kusters, Blake Mizzi and Ty Carey said, “Rapidly rising operation costs, a weakening AUD, poor Early Access sales, and the unprecedented withdrawal of funding opportunities across the industry, placed us in a position where we could no longer afford to cover development costs.”
They stress that this decision “will not impact the launch or quality of Solium Infernum”, which is still on track for its early access release date of February 14th, nor will it affect the ongoing support they provide for Armello.
We’ve got some unfortunate news to share, folks. A thread:pic.twitter.com/hDjlrkKtdV
“The world has changed since then,” Kusters told our colleagues atGamesIndustry.Biztoday. “The Australian dollar fell like a stone, and all of our software and everything is paid for in USD. Inflation across the board. Cost of rent. Tech salaries rose in Melbourne by 40% last year. You add all these things up and it almost creates the exact amount that we were missing right at the end of the project. We have contingency in our budget, so we make the same mistakes or stupid decisions that every developer makes and this game wouldn’t have come in on budget anyway, even if all these things didn’t happen, but the amount it’s blown out is just wild.”
League Of Geeks are “immeasurably sorry” that they haven’t been able to find a way to support Jumplight Odyssey, but stress that they’re still working on one final patch to make the game “feel as complete as we possibly can” before they have to stop development. What’s more, half of their profits from every copy sold will be “distributed to our team (including those whose employment was impacted)”, they say.
“We don’t want this to be the end of Jumplight Odyssey. If investment in the project becomes a reality, and the conditions exist where it is financially possible for us to boot this game back up, we absolutely will.”
Alas, it will likely be sometime before Jumplight Odyssey finds it own Forever Star now, and we wish the very best of luck to everybody affected.
