If you point your brain back at 2017, you’ll recall that an ambitious survival sandbox called Hellion braved the Steam early access waters. Zero Gravity Games’ sci-fi thriller had caught our eye with its creepy sci-fi setting and hardcore mechanics. But sadly, the game is not to be, at least not to the original vision: The studio announced that it can no longer afford to develop the game.
“Unfortunately, the cruel reality is – not enough players were brought into our world of Hellion to make it commercially viable. After the sloppy start of the game, predominately in terms of bugs and issues, we gave our best to fix the game and add new content via numerous patches and updates. Hellion grew, got better, but is still far from the original idea of what Hellion was meant to be. Factions, additional ships, trade posts, all of this was simply put aside since our team was constantly fighting technical issues, some of which were simply impossible to be solved for good. That struggle is coming to an end. At this point, without an influx of new players, the game doesn’t pay for its development.”
It looks as though the game has now launched from early access as it is, “without achieving goals” set for it by its devs, with a price-cut to $15 since it’s “not fully finished.” That fee will pay for the servers to stay up, though the game won’t see patches or fixes from here on out, and “control over the official servers will be handed to Hellion’s Discord moderators.”
While it seems some players are sympathetic, others are currently asking for refunds and calling it a scam, and of course Steam reviews have since tanked to “mostly negative” as angry players warn everyone else away from picking up the title now that it’s “launched” and the only formal notice that this newly launched title comes as-is is buried in Steam’s updates, not on the Steam page itself.
