Hey, Spacefarers.
Trent here, LoG Co-founder & Studio Director.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a fun or happy announcement. We are in the devastating position of having to pause development of Jumplight Odyssey indefinitely.
Though our commitment to our beloved starship adventure sim is unwavering, rapidly rising operation costs, a worsening AUD/USD exchange rate, poor Early Access sales, and the unprecedented withdrawal of funding opportunities across the industry, have placed us in a position where, as it currently stands, we are unable to sustain the cost of operations through to the release of v1.0, which was planned for Q2 of 2024.
As a result, we have also had to go through the traumatic process of saying goodbye to many of our closest friends and colleagues at League of Geeks. This has impacted the entire Jumplight Odyssey team, and folks from our publishing and operations teams.
This decision will not impact the launch of Solium Infernum on February 14, nor will it affect the existing support we offer our Armello players. The Jumplight Odyssey team is working hard on one more patch for you all before we have to stop development. Our goal with this coming update (v0.3.1) is to make Jumplight Odyssey feel as complete as we possibly can in the incredibly short time we have left on the project - including bringing in a couple things we were holding back for v1.0.
For us, Jumplight Odyssey has always been a story about hope, resilience, teamwork, and persevering against all odds. So the first thing we want to say is that we are so, so, immeasurably sorry that we haven’t been able to find a way forward.
The game is as good as it is right now because of your unwavering support, your feedback, your bug reports and your input. This was never the future that we envisioned – our hearts are truly, completely broken in that we find ourselves unable to finish what we started.
Ty, Blake and myself, the directors of LoG, cannot apologise enough to the community and our wonderful team for the fact we’re here. Regardless of current market conditions, rising costs, or whatever bogeyman we want to point to, as heads of the studio, we are ultimately accountable for this situation. It’s always a possibility in game dev, but this is not a message we ever expected to write, and we take full responsibility for that.
You’re entitled to be frustrated, sad, devastated and everything in between. I am too. All of those things. We all are at League of Geeks. I hope you can understand that this was an impossible situation and a heartbreaking decision to have to make.
Your frustrations are also totally valid – the only thing I ask is that you direct them at myself and not the team, they’ve been through more than enough already.
We don’t want this to be the end of Jumplight Odyssey. If investment in the project becomes a reality, and the conditions exist where it is financially possible for us to boot this game back up, we absolutely will. The grim reality however, is that at least for right now, it’s a very scary time (economically) for indie developers of our size.
Moving forward, we want to ensure that the game does something to give back to our fantastic team who worked so hard on it.
So for the next twelve months or until development is resumed, whichever comes first, half of our profit from every copy sold will be distributed to our team (including those whose employment was impacted).
LoG was literally founded on the belief that those who contribute to our projects should share in the spoils of our success, so it's important to us that we continue to live that value.
It’s at least some way we can honour our friends and colleagues who have given so much to this game, and for new players to support the folks who made it special in the first place.
Thanks, folks. We’ll continue to update this FAQ with questions as they surface.
If you’re interested, we have an
FAQ available here that goes into more detail about it all.
For those of you who aren’t into the details, we’ll say goodbye for now and thank you for all of your support.
Thank you. <3