John Smedley Announces Hero’s Song Cancellation, Pixelmage Studio Closing

John Smedley, one of the main driving forces behind the original release of EverQuest, today announced that his independent development studio, Pixelmage Studio, will be closing and subsequently all work on the MMO project Hero’s Song will cease.

The announcement comes via a Twitter post where Smedley shared a link with fans offering the reasons behind the unexpected closure, citing lack of sales as the main culprit.

On a slightly more positive note, and something that’s nearly unprecedented in the MMO industry, Pixelmage Studio’s will be offering full refunds to both Indiegogo supporters and those that purchased the Early Access through Steam.

[testimonials user=” email=” name=’Pixelmage Studio’ position=” photo=”]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.

For our Indiegogo customers, please email refunds@pixelmagegames.com with your name and information about which one of the packages you bought so we can make sure you get your money back. Our team will respond to confirm we received your email and we’ll make sure you get your refund quickly.

For players that purchased via Steam you will be able to claim your refund through the normal Steam refund process. Go to https://help.steampowered.com and you can get your refund right away.

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.[/testimonials]