Project Gorgon Devs Have Run Out Of Money And Transitions To Part-Time Development
Project Gorgon developer Elder Game has hit a major development roadblock as the three-person indie studio announces that its run out of money. Studio co-founder Eric Heimburg admits that the past three years have been hard for them due to the COVID-19 outbreak and his and co-founder Sandra Powers recent diagnosis with cancer.
The husband-and-wife duo are both former Turbine developers who’ve been funding the fantasy MMORPG’s development from their own pockets to supplement its early access sales. According to Heimburg, 2023 started out strong but revenues eventually dried up and so did their personal savings.
“In terms of productivity, 2023 has been better! Sandra is still dying of cancer, sure, but she’s been able to work more of the time, and so have I,” Heimburg said. “However, the second half of the year we’ve run into a new problem: we’ve run out of cash.”
“In the past when money was tight, Sandra and I would stop paying ourselves from the company funds and survive off of savings,” he continued. “But there’s no more savings: cancer is stupid expensive, even with health insurance. At the same time, money from the game has slowly dwindled over the past three years, owing in part to the lack of new game content. Our big sale this summer was a lot of fun, but it didn’t hit the goal we needed to keep everything going. At this point, we’re out of money to pay for full-time development.”
Heimburg assured the community that Project Gorgon won’t be shutting down, but they will have to cut costs by only rolling out bug fixes as needed. “Thanks to the influx of monthly VIP money, we can afford to keep the game running indefinitely with basic support and bug-fix updates,” he explained.
“[…] We no longer have any full-time employees, and our part-timers have reduced hours. This means that right now, we won’t be able to devote significant time to developing major new content or features. Instead, we’re switching to part-time development while we regroup, save up some money, and figure out the best way forward. Next year, we’ll see where the finances are and look at our options.”
He also acknowledged the very real possibility of Project Gorgon being shut down if their financial situation doesn’t improve. This will likely require a fresh batch of VIP subscriptions to give them enough seed money to continue working on the game.
“We haven’t given up yet! But if this is the end, I want to say how sorry I am that I couldn’t complete the game I promised. And how grateful I am that you supported us all these years, Thank you. I will never forget what you’ve done for us,” he concluded.
