Gangs of Space was our child and became the prison of our hopes. Gangs of Space was a stroke of madness that arrived one day, or maybe a night, in Tokyo, in the middle of an amusement arcade full of Shmup classics! Gangs of Space has been, indeed, quite an adventure!

But it is with much sadness that we announce today the upcoming end of Gangs of Space.

Closing schedule

• November 30, 2018: commercial closure (end of the sale of the support packs on Steam).
• May 31, 2019: official servers and support closed.

And after that? Total blackout? We are trying to find a way to keep the game playable, but we can not guarantee anything and in any case, it will be outside of Steam.

Why close the game?

Maybe one day Erhune will have the courage to write a long post-mortem on the development of Gangs of Space, but until then let’s summarize the main reasons:

• No money! Even after all these years of work on Gangs of Space, the launch in Early Access and the warm reception of tens of thousands of players, we have never been able to get any money from Gangs of Space for us. Not even a beer or a restaurant… nothing at all! We had made the choice to reinvest everything to self-finance the dev of the game (software, assets, hosting / server, freelance, administration, etc …). How did we manage to keep working for that long without going crazy? Maybe we already were from the beginning?!
• No funding! Since it became clear the game would not make enough revenue with our current marketing reach, we tried to find investors to finance finishing the development of the game and promoting it. It took us a lot of time and energy, but in the end, even with a well advanced game and 70,000 players, it was too risky for them.
• No communication! It’s simple, in 2018 (and also in 2017), to have the mainstream media talk about your game, the norm is that either everyone is ALREADY talking about you, or you will have to pay. So sad when you’re putting everything you have on the line to try to make “different” games that nobody wants to finance.
• No more energy! In the end, all of this consumed our ultimate energy reserves. We will have tried many things behind the scenes, but now we have nothing left in us to keep moving us forward.

Commercial closure?

Because we do not want to sell a service that you do not really have time to use at your convenience, we prefer to stop the sales of the support packs after this announcement.

This allows us to provide another 6 months of service for the last irreducible who still want to enjoy their Gangs of Space.

Thanks

During all these years we met many people without whom this project could not have gone so far and who we wish to thank:

• First of all, classic but important: thank you to our families! The relatives who supported us all these years without always understanding our determination to finish Gangs of Space, but still supported us with no judgment, no advice, but listening, love, and the good dishes of our mothers which kept us afloat in the darkest times of doubt.
• Right after, thank YOU, you our dear 70,000 players! Whether you spent a few minutes or a few years in our company, you played and participated with determination! Your feedback has been decisive in the evolution of the game. To have made a game that will have you passionate, amused, relaxed, raging, will be our greatest pride forever. Thank you 70,000 times!
  • And thanks to those active members of the community who have been especially involved at all levels, wiki, moderation, community pillars, tools, passionate evening streamers, etc … (no names because there are so many of you, but your love will not be forgotten!)
• -oTo-, our composer who kept with us all these years, and produced an incredible soundtrack that give so much life to the game!
• Aganon, Skywilly, Bestio and Seldell, from the websites Jeuxonline, Game Side Story et Indiemag. If all the journalists and the streamers were all like them, there is no doubt the world of gaming would be full with far more original and interesting games!
• And finally thanks to all people who crossed our road, all the devs, friends, streamers, visitors on a show, star (like Richard Garriot or Zun) who gave us a few minutes or a few hours of their time and contributed, in their own way, of shaping the Gangs of Space we have today.

Come and sign the Guestbook of Space!

The closing of an MMO is always a special moment. It is the opportunity for the old players to nostalgically recall their best memories. For the occasion, we have opened two “Golden Books” on the forum where you are invited to come and tell what Gangs of Space was for you. Your memories, your anecdotes, even a screenshot?

• Guestbook Gangs of Space [english]
• Guestbook Gangs of Space [french]

MINI FAQ

Why not making the game open source?

• This is a good question and we have studied this option a lot, but it is a lot of work with a lot of legal issues. For example we are using many assets and tools that we have a commercial license for, but that we do not have the right to redistribute…

Why not sell the game to another company that can take care of it?

• An MMO is a very complicated beast to sell, much more than a solo game. The purchasing company would need an inhouse development team with the expertise to continue the development of the game, and be able to provide support, hosting, community management, marketing… So unless your game is very big and you can talk to the big players that already have these people, nobody wants to take the risk of such an investment on their side.

All hope is lost forever?

• It is almost certain that neither Erhune nor Grouroux will resume work on Gangs of Space at some point. But if one day a serious team wishes to work on Gangs of Space and shows us that they have the capacity to do it, we would of couese consider the option very seriously.

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