Stainless Steel Studios is no more on Rise and Fall Heaven Forum (thanks
Tiscali Games) is a forum thread with word that the developer has closed its doors. This
is not actually a confirmed announcement, but posts from (now presumably former) SSSI
developers like Daniel Higgins leave little hope that this will turn out to be
erroneous. Here's Daniel's message on the topic, and how it may impact the
future of Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War, which is apparently not quite
complete:
This is true, SSSI is no more. I can't give details as to why,
but I can tell you the product is in excellent shape, the team was in high
morale and plowing ahead at full steam, and we were just weeks from gold disk.
When making games, not all factors are under your control. If one of those
uncontrolable factors are important to your company and product, and fails you,
bad things like this can happen. It's an unfortunante part of life. You can only
learn from the experience, hopefully educate others on your experiences, and
everyone in the games industry gets stronger as a result.
Still, this is truly a dissapointment. The talent of our team was incredible,
the synergy we had, amazing. We would have been a gold-mine pickup for one of
the bigger publishers if they wanted a top-notch RTS game company under their
wing.. but alas... People are spreading to the wind now, unfortunantly
seperating some amazing talent that worked on, what I feel is one of, if not the
most, modern RTS Technology in the industry. 7 years, and.. hmm.. something like
70 programming years (man years) put into the product.
If Rise & Fall is released by someone else (its just a few bugs from finishing),
you guys will love it! RAF is an RTS evolutionary game, and its a shame we won't
be around to write its XPacks and sequels.
I think the biggest loss here is the fans who love RTS. The death of our AAA RTS
company means 1 less team driving to increase the industry's limits. It means 7
years of technology and the team who knew it like the back of their hand, put on
the shelf.
I feel bad for you guys. :-(
As for me, I'm not sure which direction I'll go yet, but I'll let you guys know
in a week or so where I'm heading off to.
RPG Vault's Age of
Conan: Hyborian Adventures Peek #3 has thoughts from Funcom on the
technologies being incorporated into their upcoming barbaric RPG that will offer
the visual experience that is expected from a premium game. Included are a bunch
of screenshots showing off the game's eye candy, so be sure to brush your eyes
afterwards to prevent cavities.
The Time
has Come for Action, We will be ignored no longer on IW Nation's Official
Infinity Ward Forums features discontented outcry from some Call of Duty 2
server operators. The thread is an extensive discussion of the potential for a
"strike" to take multiplayer servers for the World War II shooter sequel offline
as a protest. At issue are the game's lack of anti-cheating technology (the
original Call of Duty eventually added PunkBuster support via a post-release
patch) and general lack of information about plans to support the game going
forward.
BFPirates.com now offers downloads
of version 1.0 of the BFPirates modification for Battlefield 1942 (thanks
Planet
Battlefield and
Ant). The latest edition of the high seas modification was
originally a FilePlanet exclusive, but a more extensive list of mirrors is now
online.
Mmm, Turkey Sandwiches...
Twitter 
