We made Steambirds as a labour of love in hopes of bringing players together and building meaningful friendships between them. In some ways, we feel like we succeeded - we made an experience with significantly less toxicity and greater cooperation than many online games achieve. But in some ways we have to admit that we have failed, as the number of players returning to the game quickly dwindled post-launch despite our efforts. We tried to rejuvenate the game with two major updates (flocks together, and more together) and a number of smaller updates, but ultimately we weren’t able to achieve our goals.
It pains us to say this, but we can’t afford to keep working on this game. It has already cost us a great deal more than it has earned, and while we have plenty of ideas for how to improve Steambirds further, we have very little confidence that those ideas will be enough to turn things around. Spry Fox is a small, independent studio with no investors or wealthy patrons, and we can only do so much. Unfortunately, Steambirds is barely limping along right now and doesn’t have the critical mass of players that it needs to be a compelling MMO. Fixing the issues that are driving people away and getting lots more players to show up will cost significantly more money than we happen to possess.
Because of the aforementioned issues, effective immediately we are disabling IAPs for gold. We don’t want players to spend more of their hard-earned money on the hope of a long-term place to play, only to have it disappear in a few months. We will continue to keep the game online and running for at least four more months, but after that time it is likely that we will shut down the game to avoid further hosting and maintenance costs.
Thank you so much to everyone that has been part of this journey with us. We’re broken-hearted to be announcing the end of the road, but we take solace in the fact that we at least met some wonderful human beings along the way. We'd like to thank everyone in the community who gave us their support during these years, and especially those of you who stayed around even when things seemed dire. Without you, we wouldn't have even been able to make it this far. We hope you had a good time and made some friends along the way.
Good skies!
- All the Spry Foxes