Developer Spilt Milk has announced that its ambitious indie MMO Lazarus is dead.
In a post on Discord, the studio said that it had come up against challenges it could not overcome, including the game's persistent world. The MMO has been in open alpha for some three years.
Spilt Milk emphasised that the studio is fine and will continue to exist. Lazarus' servers will be taken down on September 12th, 2019.
"Sometimes you face challenges that you simply cannot overcome," Spilt Milk said.
"We spent months and years with a tiny team, exploring the challenges and opportunities of a new design space - persistence, scale, the kinds of things that the cloud can offer - and in the process providing feedback to help our technology partner Improbable improve their tech as well as making Lazarus brilliant fun. and we’re immensely proud of what we achieved. But after a long period of Open Alpha, we’ve made one of the toughest decisions of our careers: we are not going to release Lazarus.
"So what does this mean? It means we’re shutting Lazarus down. It has been in Open Alpha for nearly 3 years - which has been incredible, and is longer than some much better known MMO’s - and we’ve made some tremendous new friends along the way. But Lazarus is dead. This was a tough decision, but since this was a pre-Early Access Open Alpha, made available free to our community, we hope you’ll understand our decision, and join us in saying goodbye.
"Spilt Milk Studios is fine though - we’re alive and well, and this won’t affect us moving forward. We’ll mourn the passing of this amazing, ambitious game, and we will move forward stronger for the experience."
This is the third project using Improbable's SpatialOS to bite the dust in the last few months. Bossa Studios' Worlds Adrift was cancelled in May with the studio having said publicly previously that changes to the cloud tech had meant a huge amount of work for the relatively small team.
Meanwhile, ambitious battle royale title Mavericks: Proving Grounds from Cambridge's Automaton was cancelled after the developer went into administration at the end of July 2019.
