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.