Vainglory Forums

Today, with a heavy heart, we are pausing our work on Vainglory: Community Edition. We are indefinitely postponing further feature development and bug fixes for VG:CE, at least until the successful launch of Catalyst Black. Vainglory servers remain up and running. We will still launch the community designed icon, and ensure the game remains playable, but we can no longer predict when the remaining features of Vainglory: Community Edition will become available. It’s not what we wanted, but it is important for the well-being of the team at Super Evil Megacorp.

We first announced our plans around Vainglory: CE on April 1, a few days after we had saved the servers from being shut down overnight. We had hatched a plan for VG:CE to enable the game to live forever. We said the journey would be risky. But we were unable to appreciate just how much would be involved in our plans. We had intended to use the same resources that worked to maintain Vainglory with Rogue in order to build the necessary features for VG:CE. That did not work out. We tried to use nights and weekends, which meant things went much slower than we wanted. It’s been difficult for many of us, and it’s not sustainable.

We’re happy that now with last week’s phase 1(b) release, the game is broadly stable and playable, and now that we have the community contest concluded the game will have its identity as a community edition title. However, now is also the time we must face up to the fact that this is as far as we can take VG:CE at this stage. To reflect this pause, we are also taking down Vainglory from the following platforms: Steam, Samsung and Amazon. The 1(a) versions downloaded from those platforms will continue to work. However, new downloads will not be available until such a time that we resume work on Vainglory: Community Edition.

We’re in the industry to build amazing gaming experiences that deserve to exist and that we, as gamers, love. We did not get into making games to try to make money. However, the truth of the industry is that you have to be able to make money to make games. As you know, we turned off transactions in VG:CE because we didn’t feel right about continuing to charge money for a product whose future was uncertain. We are passionate about VG:CE, and we are passionate about allowing the game and its community to live forever. However, our priority as a studio today must be the health of our hard-working staff and their families. To do that, we have to focus on shipping a commercially viable game without the added stress of attempting to do more things at once than we are capable of. Hence we have to focus all our attention on Catalyst Black’s upcoming launch. These have been challenging conversations internally as they have questioned our very identity as a developer.

This pause is not what we wanted, but we still believe this present state is better than turning off VG servers entirely. We continue to think the plan we outlined for VG:CE is the right one, and we’re hoping we can look at this again once we’ve launched Catalyst Black successfully.

Until then, thank you for the patience and support.


Kristian “EdTheShred” Segerstrale

FAQ:

So, is Vainglory dead now?
No! The game will continue to be accessible in its present state for the indefinite future.

What about parties, my historical profile (LE skins, etc.), and the plans for community server hosting?
These are the further feature developments that require being placed on hold until the studio can successfully launch Catalyst Black.

What about the bugs with skin selection and talents?
Unfortunately, these are server side issues that likely include a bunch of unknown work. We do not have plans to address these before putting development on hold.

What about Steam and other PC platforms, will those get updated?
We will be pulling these versions of Vainglory down for the indefinite future. You will only be able to access downloads of VG:CE from iOS App Store and Android’s Google Play Store.

Why not just kill the game?
We talk about this a bunch in the video interview, but we continue to believe that having access to the game in the present state is still a better alternative than not having it at all.

What about the community art contest icon update?
This is work that is getting wrapped up shortly. You should expect this in the game in the coming week or so.

When will you start the work on VG:CE again?
We simply can’t know at the present moment. Assuming we can launch Catalyst Black successfully, we will then reassess the work remaining on VG:CE roadmap.