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.