Dear Players,
After a year on Steam through Early Access and into its recent 1.0 release, I’m saddened to share that we have decided to sunset Eldegarde, taking the game offline indefinitely. While our team at Notorious is incredibly proud of the quality, experience, and passionate community we built with Eldegarde, it unfortunately didn’t gain enough traction to sustain the studio financially long term. The game will no longer be for sale on Steam, but it will remain online and playable until March 31st. Players who purchased the game in the past two weeks are eligable for a full refund, but you will be unable to continue playing the game.
Eldegarde was an incredibly ambitious game for a new, small startup studio. It featured a unique combat system that blended Action RPG combat with MMO-like classes and spells, a session-based extraction mode that offered both PvPvE and PvE experiences, and deep, rich systems that I believe rival even mainline MMOs. While it started as a “fantasy extraction game,” the 1.0 release evolved the vision into something of a mini-MMO that we planned to build upon over time—perhaps one day growing into a next-generation traditional MMO.
Notorious and I still believe in the long-term opportunity for Eldegarde, and even today hope that we can resurrect it at some point. While most of the team at Notorious has moved on to the next chapter of their careers, a small group has volunteered to convert the game to be playable offline, or perhaps with a client-side server. This is a challenging endeavor that will take a significant amount of time and may be not be achieveable anytime soon (if ever—this isn’t a promise!). Still, we would love to preserve Eldegarde in some way for our fans—and for ourselves. Stay tuned to our X account for any updates.
While all of us are deeply saddened that this marks the end of our five-year adventure with Notorious (and I’m sure many of you feel the same), we also want to celebrate the creative achievements and moments we shared building the game with you. Creating Eldegarde alongside you—especially through our 28 Meet the Devs episodes chatting live—has been a career highlight. Your feedback and suggestions are what continued to make Eldegarde great.
Some of the best games today weren’t hits immediately, but grew their player base and achieved their ultimate vision over time. There is no doubt in my mind that, given enough time, Eldegarde would have become a great success. But the games industry has not been in a healthy state for a long time, which was also part of the reason I left Blizzard to start Notorious. We are in an incredible transitional moment in the industry right now, one that is causing a great deal of pain for studios and developers. While we strived to build a smaller, leaner, more focused studio, we are not immune to these tectonic shifts reshaping the industry. As painful as this is—including for us—I believe it will ultimately be for the best for both game developers and players in the long term.
I was asked from time to time what success at Notorious would look like, and I always said to make a great game that players enjoy. I wake up every day with fan mail telling us how much they've enjoyed the game and are rooting for our success, so given that metric for succees, I feel a lot of gratitude.
From myself and all of us at Notorious, it has been an honor and a privilege. Thank you for playing, and we hope Eldegarde has created memories you will cherish. We hope to see you in Eldegarde sometime during this final month of March, and we hope to continue making more games for you to enjoy.
Thank you,
Chris Kaleiki
Founder, CEO
Notorious Studios