Medieval Engineers has ended development with one final small update

After a long silence and one small final update, Keen Software House have declared Medieval Engineers done and shoved it out the door. First launched in 2015, the build 'n' siege sandbox hadn't seen a substantial update in the past year year of early access while Keen focused on its sci-fi sibling, Space Engineers. Keen had insisted that Medieval Engineers wasn't abandoned but now with one final round of bug fixes, they've called it quits. Welp!

"We do not currently plan further major updates for Medieval Engineers," Marek Rosa, Keen's CEO, said in today's announcement. That makes today's update the final one, a littl'un fixing "critical" bugs including "a problem with grids disappearing from the world" and several crashes. Rosa explained more of why they're binning it:

"We haven't released a major update since February 2019. The reason for this decision was that we changed the focus of the Keen Software House team. We have restructured the team, focused on moving Space Engineers out of Early Access, then on the development of Space Engineers for Xbox One, and the continual support and upgrades for Space Engineers.

"We re-evaluated the Medieval Engineers project and, looking at the numbers, we have decided to end development on this title and release the game out of Early Access."

Back in May 2019, not long after that last big update and the shift in focus, Medieval Engineers lead Tim Toxopeus did say Keen would return to it (though he himself was leaving).

"Do not worry, Medieval Engineers is not abandoned; there are still plans for Medieval Engineers, and in the near future Keen Software House will continue to work on the game," he said at the time. That certainly suggested substantial future additions, but evidently plans changed.

Rosa added today, "We were planning this update for quite a long time, but as we restructured our team, we simply did not find the right time to put it all together for the release." Yep. About sums it up. This is no surprise.

Keen had surely hoped Medieval Engineers to find some of the same success as Space Engineers, and it never did. When we played it in 2015, it had some nice destruction tech but not much point to it. When Keen paused Medieval then fell silent on it for over a year, it seemed likely that its days were numbered, barring a miracle. And here we are. They should have been more open about this, and sooner.

While Rosa did not use the word 'refund', he did say people unhappy with development ending should "reach out to us at support@keenswh.com" so maybe you'll get lucky?