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Having raised $660k over two years ago, the future of Yasumi Matsuno’s successfully Kickstarted RPG Unsung Hero looks incredibly uncertain.
The game was originally due to be released in July 2015. A delay until late 2016 – and a change of direction for the gamplay – caused much consternation last autumn. Now things have got far bleaker, with developer Playdek confirming that the game is no longer in active development.
Our continued intention is to make a great game, and get Unsung Story to development completion and released to you and the gaming public,” the studio said. During the last few months we have had some development setbacks that are affecting our timeline and progress on the game, while also affecting what we need to do in the immediate future as a company.
After we posted our latest development progress, we unfortunately lost a few key staff members that were part of Unsung Story development, and that has had an impact on any progress since then, as well as our product focus. We now have one internal team capable of working on a single project, and for the financial strength of the company we need to focus on a few products in the near term that have the ability to get to a retail release before Unsung Story is able to.”
In other words, Playdek is telling backers that it still wants to release the game, but it’s going to have to successfully develop and release other titles in the interim to fund it.
While this is a difficult choice to make, it is one we need to do for the ongoing financial health of the company,” the company added. For Unsung Story, we will explore options for outside development help, and will look to see if we are able to bring on an outside team that can assist us in furthering development. While we aren’t assured this will come to fruition, we do want to make sure that we are exploring any options at hand that can make progress on the game.”
It goes without saying that Playdek now has no idea when the game will be released.
Unsurprisingly backers are now formally requesting refunds in their droves – although seeing as Playdek has obviously burned through its existing development budget, it’s hard to imagine this coming to fruition.
