It’s been a little while since we’ve heard anything major out of Wurm Online, with the game’s last big ticket feature being the addition of animal husbandry. After that, the promise of monthly updates fell away, leading many players to become worried about the state of the game. This worry was answered a few days later by one of the devs, who explained that the radio silence was due in part to “life issues” that upended a lot of studio Code Club’s plans.
“It’s frustrating for all of us, customers and developers alike. Life can hit you hard, and with how small of a team we are, we simply do not have the resources to cover things like medical emergencies and deaths of friends. Things that require time off, often times suddenly and without warning. We have developers, volunteers and contractors alike, who have been working diligently on new and exciting projects behind the scenes. I can’t share them yet, but I do want you all to know that work has not stopped. Slowed, yes. Stopped? Not at all.”
The devs then posted a fresh development update this past Tuesday, promising that the game’s animal husbandry system would receive a wide variety of fixes in an update next month, and that new community managers were being brought on to help with communication issues.
The tail end of the post also offered something of a surprise: an announcement that VR support for Wurm is in the works. More details on this feature were promised to come later, but the post stressed that design of VR support isn’t expected to derail development of other features, and that the 2020 roadmap should still be considered an accurate snapshot of what comes next. The announcement of VR support garnered some mixed response, with some expressing excitement and others expressing skepticism.
There is still some concern about Wurm Online’s future, with the game’s platform owner Game Chest reporting to investors in May and June that subscriber numbers were down to about 5,500 and 5,000 respectively. That said, the company repeats the promise of new content additions to Wurm Online as well as launch towards “additional markets and platforms.”
