The developers of the survival MMO Last Oasis are facing financial challenges. They announce the release of a new game to save the studio from bankruptcy.
Why is the studio facing this? The Donkey Crew studio released the survival MMO Last Oasis in Early Access in 2020. In the game, players build massive walkable bases to travel across a dying planet.
Last Oasis immediately became a top seller on Steam, but it had so many server problems that it even had to be taken offline for a week. Unfortunately, things didn’t get better over the years: the number of players fell and the reviews got worse.
In some cases, players had to wait up to a year for new updates from the studio. Even today, almost 4 years later, the game is still in early access and there is still no version 1.0 in sight.
In an interview, the person responsible for the game’s project now states that the studio is on the verge of collapse and that it is currently not an option to continue developing the game.
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A new game should be the solution
What will save the studio from closure? In the interview, project manager Florian Hofreither goes on to say that the reality is to either close the studio completely or release a new game.
For this reason, their new medieval village building RPG Bellwright was announced last year, which is also scheduled to appear in early access, probably in the first quarter of 2024.
The project manager further describes that Last Oasis sold quite well at the beginning, but after a while it no longer made any money. So there were only three options overall: fire 90% of the studio and continue developing Last Oasis, release a new game or close down completely.
Reactions from the community: The community appears to be very upset about the announcement, according to a Reddit thread titled “Do not support this game.” The players’ main concern is that Last Oasis has not yet been completed and, in their opinion, the developers are not responding appropriately to their criticism.
User retrorays even goes so far as to claim that, in his opinion, there have been massive comment bans on Steam regarding the new game Bellwright. According to him, even his supposedly positive comment was banned because it was “off topic”.
This isn’t the first time a studio has faced closure for financial reasons. The Day Before studio also closed its studio just days after its release. You can read what this is all about here:
The Day Before was the most wanted game on Steam, is now closing a few days after release: “Financially failed”