Four years ago or so, a number of folks at Massively, including me, had their sights set on Akaneiro: Demon Hunters. It was a co-op ARPG by American McGee with a successful $200,000 Kickstarter behind it and a Red Riding Hood-inspired, horror-esque Mori Girl setting and beautiful, cel-shaded graphics. The only real problem with the game was its hybrid business model, which couldn’t quite decide whether it was buy-to-play or free-to-play with an excessive pay-to-play cash shop.
Along the way, the game’s real-life business model collapsed. In 2014, McGee admitted that studio Spicy Horse Games was $1.7 million in debt and had downsized to just two people. But the game was at least playable — in a messy but free-to-play state on Steam.
That is, at least until recently. Over the past week, players have begun reporting on Steam that the game has gone offline without warning. According to MMO Fallout, support tickets are apparently triggering an auto-responder that declares Spicy Horse closed entirely (in July, as a matter of fact) and that it will no longer offer support for any of its games, though it does say “Akaneiro WILL continue to remain online for the foreseeable future.”
The studio’s website is still up and allowed me to log into my old account, but when attempting to actually play the browser version of the game, I received the “spicyworld.angry-red.com took too long to respond” error message and could not actually access the game.
We reached out to the studio for clarification on the game’s future, but the email has already bounced back as the contact address no longer exists. With luck, someone will remember to kick the server back to life or pay for the host again eventually. If not, it’s a sad ending to what could have been a truly unique ARPG.
