Magna Mundi Cancelled

[Jun 20, 2012, 11:15 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

The Paradox Interactive forums announce the cancellation of Magna Mundi, a project that began five years ago as a Europa Universalis III modification and was announced two years ago as a commercial project (thanks Joao). The announcement publicly calls out the game's developers with unusual candor, though it also leaves open the possibility the project could be finished by another studio. There is a response from developer Universo Virtual on their forums saying to expect a statement about this situation in the coming days from their "legal team." Here's the cancellation announcement:

today Paradox Interactive decided to cancel Magna Mundi. It will not see the light of day under the current set up: Universo Virtual (UV) will not be part of this project any more.

The reasons for cancelling the contract with Universo Virtual include the following:

- Lack of progress; we have seen this project drag on and the code we have gotten has not shown significant improvement for many months. Some old and known problems persists and new ones appear with each delivery.

- Lack of trust; the leadership of UV has given a sunshine version of the project to Paradox and reacted with irritation and anger when we have pointed out obvious problems with the deliveries. It has come to a point where they claim the project is done, and the game is ready for release – despite the many critical issues found and reported on our end.

- Internal strife within the MM team; we have gotten information from members within the MM team desperate to save the project whom report to us that the project lacks active leadership. Key personnel in the project see what Paradox sees but instead gets silenced by the UV leadership.

All in all, these are not circumstances under which we can work with a team and it will now stop. At this point we have no more news than the above.

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26.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 23:49

Kosumo

Did I hear Magna Mundi are relocating to Rhode Island?

25.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 23:19

eRe4s3r

Well this ain't a AAA developer

24.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 22:44

jdreyer

ASeven wrote on Jun 20, 2012, 16:28:

Yeah. The forums do show that the MM dev guy and some more of the devs are not really friendly with the community. Heck, I'm even now reading about how the dev team had so little beta testers to test the game because of fear of a leak, which undermined massively the development of the game due to not enough beta testers to test the bugs.

This is quite a mess. I have a feeling this will be a popcorn moment though, a lot of drama is going to come from this.

Well there's your problem right there. If they're using beta testers to deliver bug reports then they're doing it wrong. That's what internal QA is for. Your beta testers should help you test server load etc. That they may find and report obscure bugs that QA may have missed is supposed to be just a bonus.




Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

23.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 21:50

ASeven

Wow... according to this post here: As a final datapoint, Johan confirmed in a different thread that Paradox spent as much money on Ubik to make MMtG as they themselves spent making Crusader Kings 2. Holy shit.

22.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 18:50

ASeven

Golwar wrote on Jun 20, 2012, 18:44: I only needed to watch the end of Ubik's "Final Developer Interview" and I had no doubts who might be to blame. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mADu-SvYiMs&t=6m54s Funny how he seemed almost to welcome the option of being canceled. Yeah... weird how he mentions the game being canceled and focusing on it. Or not so weird in this case.

21.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 18:44

Golwar

I only needed to watch the end of Ubik's "Final Developer Interview" and I had no doubts who might be to blame. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mADu-SvYiMs&t=6m54s Funny how he seemed almost to welcome the option of being canceled.

20.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 16:28

ASeven

eRe4s3r wrote on Jun 20, 2012, 15:12: Well Gettysburg may have been the final nail in the coffin... I am just guessing. But if anything I assume Paradox did not want another PR disaster like for SOTS2. While Gettysburg was buggy it had nearly no impact on anything, no news, no angry posts outside the paradox forums. But yeah, lot of bad blood around this entire development. Kinda weird. The MM dev guy doesn't sound like someone you want to have speaking for your company either. Going from his forum posts.... Yeah. The forums do show that the MM dev guy and some more of the devs are not really friendly with the community. Heck, I'm even now reading about how the dev team had so little beta testers to test the game because of fear of a leak, which undermined massively the development of the game due to not enough beta testers to test the bugs. This is quite a mess. I have a feeling this will be a popcorn moment though, a lot of drama is going to come from this.

19.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 16:21

Quboid

After Sword of the Stars 2, from Paradox CEO Fredrick Wester:

"We’re changing our QA processes based on this game, and we’re changing the whole model of how we make games with third parties. We’ve added amendments to existing contracts to prepare, to try and stop it from happening again."

MM is probably direct fall-out from this.




- Quboid

18.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 16:18

Beelzebud

I must be out of the loop because I had to google "SOTS2".

17.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 15:12

eRe4s3r

Well Gettysburg may have been the final nail in the coffin... I am just guessing. But if anything I assume Paradox did not want another PR disaster like for SOTS2. While Gettysburg was buggy it had nearly no impact on anything, no news, no angry posts outside the paradox forums. But yeah, lot of bad blood around this entire development. Kinda weird. The MM dev guy doesn't sound like someone you want to have speaking for your company either. Going from his forum posts....

16.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 15:03

ASeven

eRe4s3r wrote on Jun 20, 2012, 14:51: bozu wrote on Jun 20, 2012, 13:38: Wow, that's a bit of a douchey post to make. Even if things dissolved with the company, they must really be angry to publicly attack UV's reputation like that. SOTS2 - you can be damned sure that Paradox learned some hard life lessons from that debacle. They got the major blame and had to sustain the refunds and worst metacritic rating a Paradox game ever got. And the trainwreck to this day is still crashing, SOTS2 has not even yet reached internal release status, 8 months AFTER the debacle. So, it is obvious that Paradox has some honest to good "holy shit we gotta do something" situation on their hands. Problem is that they did it again after SotS2, Gettysburg. Also, there's a lot of drama surrounding the MM makers in the Paradox forums so this isn't as clear cut as it sounds. Not that I have a position in this, just that this story about this game is far more complex than what the news shows. There seems to be a lot of bad blood surrounding this game.

15.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 14:51

eRe4s3r

bozu wrote on Jun 20, 2012, 13:38: Wow, that's a bit of a douchey post to make. Even if things dissolved with the company, they must really be angry to publicly attack UV's reputation like that. SOTS2 - you can be damned sure that Paradox learned some hard life lessons from that debacle. They got the major blame and had to sustain the refunds and worst metacritic rating a Paradox game ever got. And the trainwreck to this day is still crashing, SOTS2 has not even yet reached internal release status, 8 months AFTER the debacle. So, it is obvious that Paradox has some honest to good "holy shit we gotta do something" situation on their hands. This comment was edited on Jun 20, 2012, 14:56.

14.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 14:50

Tim Collins

The only reason their pulln lawyers is because they can't make legit money by making a good game.

13.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 14:46

eRe4s3r

Huh? The only nasty feeling I get is when I think that Paradox could have done this to Kerberos 8 months ago and saved us that broken release and what followed. It's obvious they don't want a SOTS2-class debacle in their core genre. If anything, they deserve massive kudos for this.

12.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 14:19

MacLeod

I like the post on the Universo Virtual website news section that announces that the game is "Code locked!"... from 6/29/2011. Must have been a crazy year since then with no code modifications.

11.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 14:07

Creston

Wait, what... So a dev now tries to release a game before it's ready, and the PUBLISHER says no? It must be opposite day. Creston

10.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 13:38

bozu

Wow, that's a bit of a douchey post to make. Even if things dissolved with the company, they must really be angry to publicly attack UV's reputation like that. initial UV response: http://forum.universo-virtual.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4291 so, it sounds like yes, he may be planning to take legal action.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 13:09

ASeven

I've got a nasty feeling this one is going to get ugly real fast. The Paradox forums are filled with rumors and some people who know ubik, the guy in charge of MM, are saying he plans to sue Paradox. Oh boy.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 12:58

deqer

According to your poor management project scope, it technically is done. Perhaps the "many critical issues" are just things you forgot to add into the scope in the first place.

Re: Magna Mundi Cancelled

Jun 20, 2012, 12:10

Jonny

ASeven wrote on Jun 20, 2012, 11:52: Woah, is that the most brutal cancellation announcement ever? These type of announcements don't usually go into this much detail. I think Paradox are stinging from releases like SotS2, where, as the publisher, they get the majority of the flak for "pushing" the game out early. Here they seem to be going for as much transparency as possible so they can't get it in the neck again for a faulty product that isn't their fault.

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