Hero's Song, the debut game from Pixelmage Games, has been cancelled. The studio has also closed down, this after poor sales following the game's launch in Early Access in November.
Former Sony Online Entertainment / Daybreak Games president John Smedley was leading the project, but it failed to find a big enough audience, and in a message posted on the studio's website, the decision to the cancel the game and refund players was explained.
It's with a heavy heart that I have to report that Pixelmage Games is going to be shutting down and we have ceased development on Hero's Song. For the last year, our team has worked tirelessly to make the game we've dreamed about making, and with your support, and the support of our investors, we were able to get the game into Early Access. Unfortunately sales fell short of what we needed to continue development. We knew going in that most startups don't make it, and as an indie game studio we hoped we would be the exception to that rule, but as it turned out we weren't.
We sincerely value our customers. You're our most important focus and have been from day one. We're going to offer 100% refunds to all of the people who bought Hero's Song.
Thank you for all the support you showed us. We're sorry things worked out the way they did, but we feel strongly that we gave it our all and we're proud of how far we came with the game. The fact that we weren't able to finish the game is painful, but the journey of making Hero's Song has been a great experience for us and we're just sorry we couldn't take it all the way.
It has been a rocky road for Smedley and Pixelmage, after a failed Kickstarter campaign it looked like the project might be on the rocks, but private investment was sourced and the game released. It didn't do as well as expected, though, and after this week's announcement Smedley and his team will be looking for new challenges in 2017.