Dusted: Legacy Of Kain F2P Spin-Off Nosgoth Cancelled
Will you miss it?
Square Enix have announced that they are cancelling Nosgoth [official site], the free-to-play humans vs. vampires multiplayer game vaguely connected to the Legacy of Kain series. It entered beta in January 2015 and will close down in May without having properly launched. It wasn't popular enough to keep going, Square Enix say, which always invites a lot of finger-pointing. Squeenix will keep the servers online for people to play until May 31st, when Nosgoth will suffer final death.
Our resident Premature Evaluator had a crack as Nosgoth soon after the open beta launched, and found it promising, at least. Looking over replies to this announcement on the Nosgoth forums, I'm seeing a lot of passionate responses saying that promise was squandered and their feedback not listened to - though every player usually has their own ideas about where a game should go and what it should be.
Squeenix said in today's announcement:
"A massive amount of work has gone into making Nosgoth a reality, and continually bringing new developments to the game. Our own teams, as well as the great guys at Psyonix, have dedicated a huge portion of themselves to making Nosgoth bigger and better over the years. Not only that, but dedicated community members provided a great deal of feedback that has been tremendously beneficial to the game. We are eternally grateful. Thank you one and all."
They add:
"This was not an easy decision to come to. It has been a pleasure to build this game with your help, but ultimately its audience hasn't grown enough to sustain ongoing operations."
Refunds will only be offered on purchases made since March 1st. Players who bought early access or microtransaction bits before then will not receive refunds for those.
As for whether the failure of Nosgoth will affect the Legacy of Kain series, they say "Any future Legacy of Kain project will be considered independently of Nosgoth and on the merits of the proposals alone." Which is fair enough. Rumour says Nosgoth only exists because it was spun off from a cancelled LoK game, Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun.