For an MMO that’s all about death and reincarnation, there’s either irony or hope in Crowfall going offline today supposedly for retooling. Whether or not the crowfunded PvP game returns, its deactivation today effectively functions as a sunset to the loyal but battered playerbase that’s stuck with a constantly declining title.
“In order to refocus our efforts from live operations to development, we have decided to take the Crowfall live service offline for the time being,” the team said earlier this month. “We’re going to use this time to map out the future of the game. We have yet to determine what that looks like, but we are investing in and rethinking every part of the game — from the core technology and tools to art, design, and gameplay. Nothing is off the table.”
The shutdown came as no surprise considering that there were signs and rumors swirling around its potential demise since its shaky launch last year.
Much of the original team for Crowfall has long moved on to new projects. Gordon Walton got snapped up by Raph Koster’s sandbox MMO and metaverse, Thomas Blair went over to Monumental, and J. Todd Coleman and other ex-Crowfall devs are tooling about a second unannounced game at Artcraft.
R.I.P. Crowfall.
