Another live service game is dead just a few months after launch

I feel bad saying this because it sucks when a game fails, but frankly this may be the least surprising news of the day: Spellcasters Chronicles, the MOBA released by Quantic Dream just three months ago, has reached the end of the line. The studio said Spellcasters Chronicles “has not reached the audience needed to ensure its long-term sustainability,” and thus development is halted—and it sounds very much like layoffs are happening as a result.

“With this project, our teams set out to explore new creative territories and create a bold, original multiplayer experience,” Quantic Dream wrote on Steam. “Spellcasters Chronicles allowed us to experiment with new concepts and bring to life an ambitious game shaped by the talent, creativity, and dedication of everyone involved.

“However, in today’s particularly challenging market environment, the game has not reached the audience needed to ensure its long-term sustainability. We have therefore made the difficult decision to refocus our efforts on our other projects.”

And then, the real bad news: “As part of this decision, the studio will undertake an internal reorganization. We are fully committed to handling this transition with fairness, care, and respect, and will prioritize internal reassignments wherever possible to support our other productions.”

Spellcasters Chronicles has been kind of a baffling proposition right from the start. The obvious question is: why would Quantic Dream—the studio of narrative-heavy adventures like Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human—suddenly decide to make a MOBA? And why, having made that decision, would it resolve to release the game amidst the overwhelming noise of the Marathon server slam, the first Horizon Hunters Gathering playtest, and the Steam Next Fest, which puts thousands of interesting game demos on the table and gives everyone seven days to get through them all?

Despite some early promise, players just didn’t show up for it: Spellcasters Chronicles launched with a peak concurrent player count of just 888 on Steam, a number that quickly tailed off to just a few dozen. For a free-to-play game that relies on in-game store purchases to pay the bills, that’s not going to do it.

The reference to an “internal reorganization” is a little bit cryptic on the surface, but is ultimately just another corporately-sanitized way of saying “we’re putting people out of work.” The studio added, however, that the development of Star Wars Eclipse, which Quantic Dream has been working on since 2021, will not be impacted by the cuts.

Spellcasters Chronicles will remain playable until June 19, at which point the servers will be closed and that’ll be that. Quantic Dream said that “all amounts” of money spent during the early access period will be eligible for a refund “upon request”—details on that will be shared via the Spellcasters Chronicles social media channels and Discord “in the coming days.”

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