You may recall an article we published earlier this week regarding the closure of English versions of City of Steam, since then Mechanist Games have taken their opportunity to set the record straight. The previous article spoke about the issues with R2Games (The publishers of the English version) and the developers, Mechanist Games, resulting in an immediate cease of services for English speaking versions of the dungeon crawler MMO.
The initial press release was a little sketchy in regards to concrete details but the developers have sent out more information to assure current players that they’re not being ignored.
From the press release:
Why are R2 servers shutting down?
City of
Steam?s English publishing rights are back in Mechanist?s hands and
other publishers must cease operation of the game. That means they must
close their servers and stop publishing the game. That is why R2 is
closing their servers. City of Steam development is not shutting down,
just R2?s servers are.Will the characters in R2’s server be transferred?
Mechanist
will be opening new servers, not continuing R2?s servers. But to honor
the loyalty of returning players, compensation will be given on these
new servers based on the specs of their old characters. We have a strong
desire to give everyone the fresh new start this game deserves, but we
also really want to thank the loyal players who stuck with City of Steam
and welcome them home, whether they spent Electrum or not. That is why
their accounts will be compensated on the new servers. Please understand
how starting fresh and honoring loyalty conflict with each other ?it is
a very tricky situation for us, a sensitive topic, so we can?t release
any more information until we are absolutely sure on the details of the
compensation.Will the developers be active in the community again?
The
PR department had to be completely laid off, making us a much more
development-focused team. The community personalities we used to have
aren?t with us anymore, so there won’t be enough manpower to respond to
players as we did before. However, you?ll find that maintenance,
patches, content and new features will be updated regularly, as you?d
expect from any MMO. We will make the effort to respond to the main
questions by the community every week or so, depending on how much time
the developers have.
So players can expect little to no communication from the development team, possible reimbursement for the time they’ve spent in City of Steam and probably heavy delays for any concerns relating to the game.
On a more positive note the other regional versions are unaffected by these changes. Do you think City of Steam will survive this unexpected setback?