Development News #194 — The end of Life is Feudal: MMO

We are forced to close Life is Feudal: MMO.

  Yes, that’s it, we have to close it, and we have to do it because of the reasons that are beyond our control.
  A couple of days ago we received an official letter from a certain company that basically says that they will stop paying us our share from LiF: MMO. There is nothing much we can do in a legal way since we do not have the required funds to pay for the costly legislation in the US. Especially in a situation where our own hard-earned money will be most probably used against us.
  Back in 2016, this company was preparing its first steps as a publisher and a video games investor. From our perspective, we believed in them and thought that a publisher who is making its first steps will be more motivated and more flexible in a way how they can publish and market our hardcore niche MMO.
  It resulted in some hectic marketing and PR attempts, partly misused marketing budget, and failing to fulfill some of their obligations. In the end, we had to make our own attempt to establish operations in the CIS region, work by ourselves with a PR agency, and try to grow our own marketing department.
  We knew pretty well that there is no way we can force them to do what they had to but didn’t want to do. Thus, we’ve maintained this status quo, where we were basically left alone dealing with the game and continued our own attempts to promote it.
  This status quo persisted until recently we’ve received the communications from this company offering a certain deal. After some negotiations, we’ve realized that this deal possesses certain risks for us, and we’re not interested in it. Thus, we’ve refused their offers.
  That is when things “went south”. We’ve felt ourselves under great business, legal, and financial pressure. This pressure didn't work.
  But it also means that, unfortunately, we can no longer pay for the servers, GM, and online support and, effectively, we cannot continue updating the game. There is nothing much we can do in this situation, and we’re simply forced to close the game.

So what is going to happen next?

  We plan to bring all servers down on the 18th of January 2021 - shortly after the 3rd year anniversary of Life is Feudal: MMO release on Steam.
  Before that, we plan to release a patch with what was prepared by us before and is ready to be released. It is not a fully complete patch, but it should provide some fresh experience for you in the last days of Life is Feudal: MMO.
  Our GM team will also accept requests for aerial screenshots of your villages/towns/castles/bases. We plan to immortalize them along with screenshots of other castles from previous wipes on our site gallery.
  We’re incredibly thankful for the journey you’ve taken alongside us during those years. We’ve heard stories about friendships and families forged on the vast spaces of Avalon, Epleland, Skjultland, Buyan, Telmun, Iriy, and Godenland, and we appreciate the part we were able to play in your lives, it is a true honor. The amount of support you’ve shown to us throughout this time is incredible. We send you our limitless gratitude and apologize for letting you down like this.

  It is a powerful blow for us, but we will stand as a team, and as a family! We cannot promise it to you as “soon”, but please do expect some news from us in the not so distant future!
  We expect that you have a lot of questions - we’ll try to cover some of them below.


Once again, thank you for this adventure.

— The Team