Virtual reality (VR) specialist Joy Way has been producing some exciting content for gamers having released Stride, Against and Outlier as early access titles over the past couple of years. The latter only arrived back in March and it seems that was one too many, as Joy Way quietly revealed a few days ago that further development of Outlier has now halted.
On its Discord channel, Joy Way detailed the reasons behind Outlier’s cancellation, saying: “Our plans for this project were ambitious, but unfortunately we overestimated the demand for this game. And underestimated the complexity of the roguelike genre. After the launch, we realized that the effort to implement our initial vision of this game would be too big compared to the relatively small audience we were targeting.”
The team went on to add: “According to our calculations, we would have to involve a significant part of the development [sic] team to work on this project over the next 8-12 months with a very low probability that the project will ever achieve at least financial self-sufficiency.”
So that’s the end of what looked to be a promising roguelite. As gmw3 said in its preview: “It could possibly become Joy Way’s biggest and baddest VR game to date, with some wicked looking enemy design – especially the boss – and variety when combining gems to upgrade yourself.”
Due to the cancellation, there will, of course, be no further updates. So those that have purchased the videogame can either continue to play as is or refund even if Steam’s two-hour window has passed.
It’s not all bad news though. Joy Way will repurpose its human and financial resources into Stride and Against, both of which received new updates last week. The studio also mentions that “the long-awaited multiplayer for Stride is on its way,” so there’s that to look forward to.
While Joy Way has shuttered its roguelite plans many other VR developers have embraced the genre. Titles like Until You Fall and In Death: Unchained have done well with new projects like Mothergunship: Forge set to arrive this summer. For continued updates on the latest Joy Way announcements, keep reading gmw3.
via Mint VR