Carbine Studios, the developer of the massively multiplayer online game WildStar, is shutting down, Kotaku has learned. Fifty people will lose their jobs in the process, according to a person briefed on the shutdown. The game will also come to a close.
Staff were informed of the closure at a meeting today, according to someone who was in the room, but it had been looming for a while after at least two of the studio’s game projects failed to gain traction with the studio’s parent company, Korean publisher NCSoft.
“Today, we are closing Carbine Studios and will begin the process of winding WildStar down to ultimately shutter the game,” NCSoft said in a statement.
“WildStar players who have spent money within the game will be refunded purchases from July 1, 2018 until the payment system is shut off. We are also in the process of identifying the teams that will be doing the work to bring WildStar to a close. These decisions are very difficult to make and we are in the midst of shifting as many of our teammates as possible into other roles within the organisation.”
Carbine was founded in 2005 by former members of the World of Warcraft team at Blizzard Entertainment. In 2007, NCSoft purchased Carbine, and in 2011 the studio announced WildStar, a stylish MMORPG that would eventually release in June 2014.
After launching with a monthly subscription, it went free-to-play a year later. In February 2016, Carbine laid off a number of staff, and the game had been quiet in recent months.
Comments
11 responses to “WildStar Developer Carbine Studios Shuts Down”
Not surprised, the early game was fun, but getting entry to the fabled late game content was horrendous. Getting Attunement was actually the most boring thing ever.
Despite whatever problems had, that combat system was amazing and I will forever want more of it, going back to any other MMO won’t cut it anymore.
Tried Black Desert? I am not a fan but its combat is more involved than most.
A shame. The game had a great style to it and plenty of things to do. The housing system was great and I wish games like WoW would take note instead of giving us things like Garrisons. Never did get that into Wildstar though, but I gave it a good solid go. Long live my little Chua engineer!
Same here. Early game was fun, and I found I always had too much to choose from, but it just fell down somewhere. Never figured out why because the game itself was more fun than most MMO’s, but when something else distracted me, I never felt like going back.
I think coming from WoW to Wildstar was a bad thing for me. Because I’d become so used to WoW’s combat going back to a game where you had to move around more bugged me. If I’d still been playing CS/BF/quake at the time I reckon I’d have enjoyed it more.
Pity the game is folding, it did look good and the bit I played was interesting.
Wildstar deserved more love than it got. It was a really fun game with a cool visual style and some great combat mechanics.
It had the misfortune of launching in the same time period as three other major MMOs (Guild Wars 2, FFXIV:ARR and TESO) and was never able to gain the audience it deserved.
A real shame.
And also no Australian servers. Just too frustrating having 200 ping in a game that relied heavily on dodging and telegraphing attacks.
This. Loved wildstar but it was just far to frustrating to play on aussie ping.
I played the beta for both Wildstar and TESO, and thought Wildstar brought more to the genre. TESO was just a (very polished) WoW clone, with all the weight of the TES lore behind it. I played GW2 from launch as well, and while good, didn’t capture me like the early Wildstar did.
In hindsight, there was no contest. TES carried a LOT of weight that TESO could leverage off, and in the end even with its jump to FTP (which I thought was inevitable for both at the time), managed to stay relevant. Wildstar, even while bringing a lot of freshness to MMO’s, couldn’t.
And I think you hit it on the head as to why – the others around it had legacy they could (and did) use to keep interest going, even if they weren’t adding anything special to MMO’s in general.
Of all those games though, GW2 is the only one I still play with any regularity.
NC soft killed it. Game was going great then a couple months in NCsoft fired like 80% of the devs. MMO’s need constant large scale support or they die.