Chronicles of Elyria dev addresses fumbled deadlines, the missing website, and press coverage

Updates on Chronicles of Elyria, the Kickstarted MMORPG that was canceled and then brought back even as backers attempted to sue for relief, have been few and far between lately, thanks to efforts by lead developer to move development news behind closed doors. But some of the privately communicated info from Discord does continue to leak out, and that’s exactly what happened this week when Soulbound Studios’ Jeromy “Caspian” Walsh addressed supporters in a long memo that discusses his efforts and reasoning.

Of note, Walsh admits that he’s missed deadlines and “overpromised” when it comes to the timeline, but he says he has been working on the game: “I work every single day to deliver a fully realized CoE. I have for the last 5 years now, without pay. Not just for my work on CoE but from any source, so that I can devote myself entirely to CoE’s development.” (Note, in 2022 Walsh did indeed say he had taken on outside work to fund the project; in fact, he intimated it was partly responsible for project delays.)

He also rejects the notion that he should admit he can’t finish the game (while also rejecting the casual sexism lobbed at him in a private message).

“I’m happy to admit I’m over my head, I’ve taken on more than I can chew, and I’m doing the work of 20 people all by my onesies. But I have grown up. And in the process of doing so, I’ve decided that delivering this game to the people who backed it is the most important thing to me, worth any cost to do so, and I’ve fully dedicated myself to that cause. Very few people can say they’ve dedicated themselves so single to something they feel to be a worthy cause.”

Furthermore, Walsh denies the accusation that he’s not being transparent; he argues that some people want every detail and others don’t want to hear anything until the game is done, so he’s “decided to split the difference.” When he streams development, he says, “no more than 2-5 people show up” because “people don’t actually care” what he’s doing – they just want to know progress is happening.

Finally, he addresses the fact the website is still offline and why. “The short answer is, I suck,” he says. “It turns out I’m a horrible web developer, maybe even a horrible programmer, and it’s taking me way longer than I expected.” He then directly apologizes for the delay and suggests he’s a “fuck-up with ADHD, depression, and levels of confidence in [his] own skill likely approaching narcissism.”

Readers will remember that Walsh has previously complained about press coverage of Elyria, and he does so again here (at considerable length), suggesting that websites “paid by impressions decide nothing else in the game industry is newsworthy enough to write about” and so must “dredge up [him], CoE, or Soulbound Studios with some new hot, juicy, or salacious news that must be shared with the world at large.”

We gently reiterate that we have a duty to inform the MMORPG public what is going on within the genre. Of the 60,000+ articles on MassivelyOP.com, very few of them feature Chronicles of Elyria, meaning we have plenty of time and space for covering our genre and its pressing issues. One of those pressing issues is the many Kickstarters that take significant sums of money from the MMORPG public but have yet to produce games for various reasons, which has bled both money and trust from our genre. In the case of Elyria, the failure of our justice system to protect consumers led Soulbound declare victory over its own financial backers and reduce transparency while maintaining that work on the game is still happening. Therefore, new developer statements are relevant MMORPG news for the MMORPG public – especially the players who put in over $14,000,000 to fund the game.

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