Chronicles of Elyria, it is finished.

Kyleran

The long awaited State of Elyria message came out today, with Caspian stunning the backers by shutting the doors.

It's a strange documentary of events which lead to this statement, and he closes pledging to hopefully continue on "someday," perhaps with a smaller "Kingdom of Elyria" built by volunteer efforts.

"But to our great sadness.... with the failure of Settlers of Elyria, and five long months of only limited crowdfunding revenue coming in, Soulbound Studios has officially run out of money. Last night I was forced to do something I never thought I'd have to do. I closed the online store, put the SoE map back into read-only mode, and laid off all the employees..."

https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/34919/state-of-elyria-into-the-abyss

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rathalas22

I felt that they were deceitful when they announced the original KS was just for the demo far after the KS closed. As much as I dislike Caspien, I do have sympathy for the employees that were let go. 

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MightyUnclean

$8 million dollars and they put out a parkour demo, then close shop.  Where did that money go?  Into whose pockets?  We can only guess.  But someone got very rich off of this.

And this, folks, is why we shouldn't crowdfund MMORPGs, or in my opinion, anything at all.

BruceYee

In b4 Kano comes to inform us that CU is next 

About CoE though didn't they pull in millions from Crowdfunding? There's no way they burned through all of it, right?

MightyUnclean

BruceYee said:

In b4 Kano comes to inform us that CU is next 

About CoE though didn't they pull in millions from Crowdfunding? There's no way they burned through all of it, right?

Turns out parkour tech demos take about $8 million to make.

Slapshot1188

I feel sorry for the folks who just lost their jobs.  I feel sorry for the people that invested a lot of money in the early days (not so much those who refused to learn).


Some of you have PMed me thinking I would be gloating.  Not at all.  It's just sad. 

If he hadn't branded us Harbingers and actually listened instead of surrounding himself with the Ivory Tower I honestly think this fate could have been averted.  A year or so ago he should have taken the opportunity to reset expectations.  Instead, he ramped them up.


This isn't a fun day.  It's utterly sad.

Deveron

Funny how he goes on to blame the backers that were left for it. What an arsehole. 

BruceYee

MightyUnclean said:

BruceYee said:

In b4 Kano comes to inform us that CU is next 

About CoE though didn't they pull in millions from Crowdfunding? There's no way they burned through all of it, right?

Turns out parkour tech demos take about $8 million to make.

I get the joke but I seriously doubt an indie team working for 5 years can burn through 8mil. What I want to know is if the crowdfunded funds were used to buy a million dollar house or two. Remember when McQuaid(Rip) took 40k Pantheon funds for "medical expenses" and everyone lost their shit? When will there be the same outrage for a few million?

MightyUnclean

You know what's scary?  Some people in the comments of the official post are still hopeful that the game will come out one day.  This just demonstrates the level of delusion that is created in the backers of some of these games.

Morgenes83

Its sad because I hoped to see such an innovative idea come to life.

But as creating the "walking skeleton" (with the core features to which you add the "flesh") wasnt possible within 5? 6? years it was pretty clear this will happen soon.

I bet CU will follow soon (as much as I hope it wont) as they also fail to get at least the core features finished.

Thinking about that the last 20% will take 80% of the time and we're not even close to this point its just a matter of time.
Everyone which works in software development knows this and those guys (caspian, mj) should know it too and should have done something about it long time ago.

Slapshot1188

I think what pisses me off the most is that I did not see him take responsibility.  It was his decisions and mismanagement that led to this.  He got double the budget he said he would need to fully develop, test and launch the game.  He never even made it to alpha. When he had the chance to reset and lower expectation he didn’t.  Instead he spent something like a year developing stupid maps (4 of them of course because 1 would have been the rational way).  

I re-read that twice.  Maybe I missed it but I don’t even think he fucking apologized.

He should never lead a company again.  Ever. 

Deveron

Caspian said:
[...]

As a result, we began developing CoE from the "ground up". We implemented character creation, character management, and all the above adventuring mechanics because "hey, everyone has to move around, use skills, and survive right?" That mindset drove the largest part of development because that's the way games have always been developed in the past. Get the core game loop down, focus on the things that will impact the most people, and polish those first.

[...]

That’s where he failed and stopped developing a MMO. A MMO basically is “just” networking and database operations. That’s what would have been developing from the “ground up”.

As long as they had access to SpatialOS and the short time after they dropped it (or were dropped) he claimed they would just develop their own backend, his narrative went in the same direction.

Suppose he’s been spinning shit for so long, that he himself doesn’t know where he is anymore. 

lahnmir

And so it ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

But no apologies, no taking responsibility for all that has happened? Not very good and even less wow. Shame on him, sad indeed for all those involved.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir 

Deveron

That’s Caspian for you. Always putting the blame on others for his own shortcomings. He did so with contractors, did so with his own employees and now that nobody’s left, he puts it on his backers. This was to be expected. 

Nilden

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AnOldFart

Well that was no surprise.
I'm glad I had given up on it tbh... 

What I think is s***, he knew it was going this way, but opened SoE and sold stuff this last month knowing he was about to fail... 

Torrsk

Well... I doubt I could add more different from my massive rage post on the forums. While I could see this coming, I'm just left with more questions over anything else. If SBS needed money that much, why not just start this stupid event at 45% off. Try get in as much money as possible. While telling the community they are going under? 

I'm sure Caspian is sitting on a nice amount of money. While everyone else is up shit creek. I don't know how it went from, making over a million last year. To being completely out now. Like.. how is someone that made a fucking failure? What skills does he even have to fail this much and never learn?

ChildoftheShadows

The only question I have is, has anyone seen any evidence of a company? Other team members? People actually doing something? I don't mean a picture of a "board room" with the Unreal Marketplace Parkour Pack playing on projector, I mean something REAL?

Just curious.

mymmo

Zzzz to all dr doom n gloom that are patting themself on their back for having guessed right. 

What a shame they couldnt delievere. Hope the ones that lost their job will be ok

Ridrith

And nothing of value was lost.

Grimula

Over 8 Million Real money was lost ? 

i think that has value hahahahahah

you must have 10 X  8 million dollars to think 8 million is ~Nothing of Value~ hahahahahah

WBadger

The drama was all entertaining but this...this is just sad.  And irritating.   The lack of taking responsibility for this farce from Caspian even in the end puts him right on the level of Jason Appleton and GreedMonger for me.  Both incompetent and promising things well beyond their own capabilities.  

More importantly, the talk about investors compromising his artistic vision of the game frustrates me as well because of how obtuse he is.  Of course investors and publishers will ask for changes!  Anything to get the game out faster so that they can get their money back.  They don't want to sit there for ten years with their hand out going "Alright, you going to pay me back now?"  If you were not willing to change your plans to suit the people who are willing to front the majority of the funds, then you should not have made any plans based off of getting those and then blast through all of your kickstarter funds.

This is why publishers are necessary evils.  The sad truth is that developers are ADD monkey divas who need a whip cracked for them to stay focused and get things done, so that they don't go years with the only thing to show being "Oh...uhh...did we do anything this year to further the game development?  Well....let's do another sale."

Torrsk

WBadger said:

This is why publishers are necessary evils.  The sad truth is that developers are ADD monkey divas who need a whip cracked for them to stay focused and get things done, so that they don't go years with the only thing to show being "Oh...uhh...did we do anything this year to further the game development?  Well....let's do another sale."

The weird thing is, Caspian turned the game so completely pay to win anyway. He added more and more items that went against his ideals in the first place. So really, why the hell didn't he just sign with one of them in the first place? 
Unless it's because if the worse case happened, he wanted to line his pockets. 

This auction event has been running for around a week. Now did his employees know it was coming to an end before today? Did they have a few weeks notice? If they did, why have this last sale? Personally it what annoys me the most. I have dealt with the fact my money was gone. Not upset over that. With how I waste money on other crap, not like it was a lot to me. But this last move. Straight up a cunt move. 

Scot

The economic turndown we are experiencing will expose any company with weaknesses, hard to say how much that affected them here but they have been going for years so rather a coincidence if it had nothing to do with that.

The decision to suddenly veer off and make a voxel version of the game was what first really concerned me, but I still thought they would get something out just not the grand vison they were selling.

The video release was strange, I did not realise is was so close to another "land issue". That sent out the wrong message, you need to see the concept of domain in action if you are expecting people to buy virtual land and titles, not a demonstration of parkour.

This is a bad time to lose your job but that's when most people lose them, hopefully their staff land on their feet.