Last week, we got the upsetting news that Tencent-owned Digital Extremes was in the middle of what turned out to be its second round of layoffs this fall, following the installation of a new company CEO. In addition to the loss of more game devs in a year that’s had far too many, the immediate effect was the axing of DE’s external publishing division, which was heavily supporting Airship Syndicate’s fledgling MMO Wayfinder, and the jettisoning of the game itself from DE’s portfolio, meaning Airship now has full control of the game.
Wayfinder, which was announced last December, hit paid early access this past August and has seen its playerbase ensmallening over the last few months; the full free-to-play launch was expected next year. The studio told fans last week that it has “no plans to stop developing the game” as it “take[s] on operations” of the title. Indeed, it hinted at a new patch – which is apparently still on the way, according to a message posted in Discord last night.
“I’m happy to report that our next patch is on track for later this week (remember that could change! we are in active dev!) and it’ll feature a much requested feature so stay tuned… we’ll post patch news soon!” the team says.
“As you can imagine it’s very busy around here but we want to continue our commitment to transparency now more than ever. We know that you probably have a lot of questions and so we’ll be hosting a community live stream in the coming days where we talk a little bit about where we are and the path forward as well as take some viewer questions. Once we have details on the stream we’ll be sure to share them here and our social channels. From the bottom of our heart we are grateful you’re here on this journey. It means the world to us that you continue to trust and support us. Wayfinder is our baby and we hope you can see that passion.”
What players want to know most, of course, is how the game will be funded going forward and who will be publishing it with Tencent and DE out of the picture. We reached out to Airship Syndicate last week with additional questions too.
In the meantime, note that account linking is offline now owing to the publishing transition back to Airship: “We have disabled account linking for cross save as we begin transitioning service. Cross play, and players who have previously linked their accounts are able to continue to play with no disruption. We hope to bring this feature back in the future.”
