A few days ago the developers behind the voxel-based MMO project, MUD, announced that the project has been cancelled part-way through fundraising as the team have been offered more lucrative opportunities. Originally the team over at Pure Bang Games were using “for hire” work to earn money to fund the development and release of MUD before heading to Kickstarter to begin an official fundraising campaign. Sadly however the game didn’t burst out of the gates and was left over $50,000 short of the $65,000 goal at the time of cancellation.
Despite its obvious struggle to reach its goal it is not the reasoning behind the cancellation of the Kickstarter. Developer Ben Walsh posted on the Kickstarter page informing the MUD community that the team will be moving on to other projects after several developers approached the team with positions working on other titles. The team saw this as the best course of action as it will allow them to better gather the funds and plan the game for a later stage.
[quote cite=”Ben Walsh”]Hi All,
First, I want to say thank you to everyone who supported the campaign with pledges and spreading the word.
MUD is a dream project for us, and one that we have self-funded by taking on work-for-hire projects. We started the kickstarter so that we could focus solely on MUD. During the campaign however, we have been approached by several companies to create games for them. It was a tough decision, but we have decided to cancel the campaign and put MUD on hold for a bit. While this unfortunately means MUD will take longer to finish, it helps us in the long run by allowing us to grow the team and have more money for MUD in the future.
We have learned a lot from doing the kickstarter campaign. We have gotten to know you, our audience, better and your feedback has been very valuable and has helped us focus the design. We want MUD to be the best game it can be, and so we are taking this opportunity to ensure that can happen. Once we have saved enough money, we will dive right back in and make MUD the best game it can be.
We are so grateful for your support! Please subscribe to our mailing list to continue getting news about MUD and Pure Bang Games: http://tiny.cc/PBG_News
Thank you,
Ben Walsh[/quote]
Source: Kickstarter