APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone’s best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close. It’s been a pleasure working on APB and with all its players. Together we were building an absolutely amazing game, and for that, we thank you. You guys are awesome!
From all of the Realtime World staff we thank you for your continued support.
The servers are still up, so join the party and say goodbye!
– Ben ‘APBMonkey’ Bateman (Community Officer)
– Ethic
holy hell… sad, but not suprising
Glad I enforced a self-imposed 6 month rule since it only lasted 3. So much potential…. sigh.
It really pisses me off to see good games programmed wrong.
See also: MxO
/sigh
I hope nobody buys a copy at Walmart,they still have a ton of copies of the game.
I should have waited, too- I bought the game (pre-ordered off of Steam, actually) and never even got a chance to install it… :)
That was quick. The poor chaps were trying to roll out another patch just a day ago or so. Someone higher up must have slammed his or her foot down.
Hopefully no one bought too many hours of play from them. It certainly doesn’t look like any reimbursements are coming, for players or developers.
Luke Halliwell has a fascinating story up in 3 parts on his blog about the APB/Realtime Worlds saga:
http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/where-realtime-worlds-went-wrong/
Sounds like a sad tale of company dysfunction.
Didn’t help that the game itself was not designed very well from the ground up and couldn’t significantly help recoup any mis-spending, I suppose.
Here’s hoping some aspects of the game can survive elsewhere, mainly the amazing character creation and customization.
I was in beta and literally spent 99% of my time building characters and customizing.
It would be a shame to see 100% of this game disappear. One would think you could buy what they built and do some tweaking and have a *decent* MMO to run for a lot less than it cost to make in the first place.
Maybe this announcement and shut down is really a ploy to force some of the companies interested in it to step up quickly.