Last week, MMO Fallout’s Connor mentioned adding The Yellow King to his abandonware list, reminding me that I meant to dig into this game to find out what happened to it. Apparently, nothing good.
Readers will recall that the game caught our attention two years ago; it was billed as a Lovecraftian MMO from Spellbook studio gearing up for a 2020 release. Spellbook was already known to us as the studio behind mobile-to-Steam MMO The Infinite Black. After a few delays, it rolled into early access in February of 2020, right at the very start of the COVID chaos began here in the States, with a revised launch plan for “2021 when the community feels it’s ready.” By October of 2020, the game had introduced a hardcore mode, as well as Mac and Linux versions. But even back then, players were pointing out on Discord that the developers had fallen disturbingly silent.
As of November 2021, all links to that Discord are broken, and we have been unable to locate the server through the usual public search methods. The developers haven’t posted any messages on Twitter since August 2020, and the company Facebook page has nothing but promotions for The Infinite Black for the last several years.
The game is still being sold on Steam with no clarity from the studio that it isn’t being actively developed; the potential player is left to read the piles and piles of Steam reviews declaring it dead and warning off would-be buyers. They pretty much look like these.
In other words, this game is one in a long line of reasons not to buy anything in early access.
