It’s been a long time since we checked in on the early access vampire MMO Shadow’s Kiss – in fact, our last look was a “whatever happened to” piece last year. But it’s been a factor in our genre since its Kickstarter back in 2017, owing less to the size of its playerbase and more to the fact that it’s the only vampire MMORPG we’ve got.
Or was, anyway. Last week, developer Clockwork Throne faced down negative reviews and a tiny playerbase and admitted defeat with a sunset announcement.
“The Shadow’s Kiss project is going into a state of being on indefinite hold. If a new opportunity or publishing deal allows us to revive San Cipriano we shall carry on, but for the last year the monthly server expenses have been far more than the revenue on the project. In the meantime, servers will be going down, and we’ll be removing Shadow’s Kiss from the Steam Store.”
Over on Facebook, the team goes into much more detail on its decision, explaining that just keeping the servers online cost “far more than the revenue on the project.” The devs also express their frustration with the early access system.
“This was a passion project and a dream that a few game developers put blood, sweat, tears, and literally years of work and mountains of personal expense into (and debt, in the form of opportunity cost, drained savings accounts, and maxed out credit cards),” the devs write. “Our Kickstarter sustained a team for about six months, but after that we were reliant on our Patreon and then our Steam sales to hold together development. We’re extremely proud that we created a playable MMO on a shoestring budget.”
“Sadly, we never had the resources for a polished, perfect experience. And we were never able to bring about the full, living city and intrigue experience that has always been part of the vision of Shadow’s Kiss. The project began with White Wolf telling us to pound sand not once, but twice. We went on to pitch to publishers in China, Europe, and North America, and several times, almost closed a deal. We opted to go to Steam Early Access as a way to be able to deploy the game to our Kickstarter backers, not realizing how much traffic it would get. The game wasn’t ready. We learned, too late, that putting a game on early access without it being in a commercially polished state is pretty much suicide. The bad reviews pretty much killed our revenue and any chance we had of closing a deal. In talking to other Kickstarters that have done the same, we learned just how dangerous Early Access is. Alas, there was no going back. Thank you to everyone who supported us along the way, and everyone who pitched in to try and achieve the vision. It’s hard to put a pause on what represents literally years of hard work and love.” [Emphasis ours.]
Our condolences to the team and the players.
