Earlier this week we had the unfortunate duty to report a serious legal and financial crisis for Embers Adrift developer Stormhaven Studios: The company says its payment processor, Digital River, has been withholding player payments for the game since this past June, a situation that has forced the MMORPG to temporarily go free-to-play. As one might expect, these developments were a primary focus of conversation in the studio’s latest dev livestream.
Executive producer John Gust, who appeared to be (unsurprisingly) very exhausted, was generally honest with his feelings about the situation as well as the studio’s decision to go F2P, as he and CM Elloa recounted the news and read the related press release. Gust appeared to be resigned to the fact that all of the money will never be seen and explained that the F2P shift was considered the best path to make sure players weren’t disrupted by the whole affair.
“Kinda at a loss for words,” Gust admits at one point in the stream. “It’s a pretty heavy blow for us to have to now realize that we can’t trust them, who can we trust, having to decide who to go with next.”
The devs also confirmed that the MMO’s Steam launch is still a “project” and there’s no date set for that arrival, as doing so is a more complicated matter than most gamers realize, particularly in the case of integrating existing accounts. Gust also acknowledged that the Steam release represents a risk, particularly in the case of a potential review bombing that might be started by the fact that Embers isn’t a game for most MMORPG players by the devs’ own admission.
The stream then goes over the most recent patch, which introduced locked chests that can appear in dungeons, new loot roll changes, and another round of fixes and adjustments.
