Seed MMO shutting down

By Tom Bramwell Published 2 October, 2006

Developer out of money.

Developer Runstone has had to give up on its ambitious non-combat role-playing-centric massively-multiplayer title Seed after the company ran out of funds.

"While we have received a great deal of interest, we have not been able to close a deal," CEO Lars Kroll Kristensen wrote on the official website. "The harsh reality is that we have now officially run out of money, and out of options, and therefore, we cannot pay salaries, rent or hosting fees."

Kristensen said that he hoped publishers and game-makers would draw "the right conclusions" about Seed, and not decide that its unusual premise was responsible for its demise. "One thing I would hate to see happen as a result of our failure would be a consensus forming that the idea about a non-combat, role play-centric MMO is a bad idea. It isn't," he wrote, emphatically.

"I am still fully convinced that a role play-centric game is not only a good idea: It’s a great idea. It just needs to be better executed. Seed has many of the right qualities for such a game, and I still firmly believe that, given sufficient funding, we could have created a great game. Unfortunately, we will never know."

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (8) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Martin #1 5 years ago

    Well, we can only hope that his words doesn't fall on deaf ears.

  • lemonfist #2 5 years ago

    I believe they were forced by the investors to launch it early - in a very unfinished state, unfortunately. I played the beta since day one on and off until launch and while they improved it, it still suffered from a horrible, unintuitive interface, lag, crashes and a lack of promised content at the time of release.

    The community was great though. It's not the kind of MMO that attracted morons and kids, so it's sad that they didn't have the funds and time to develop a fun, playable game for the loyal and friendly people who supported it.
    Edited by 1 at 02/10/06 @ 11:48

  • Azazel #3 5 years ago

    It's not the kind of MMO that attracted morons and kids

    Sadly that seems to be the audience that keeps most MMOs afloat... *tsch* :-/

  • rinoaMW #4 5 years ago

    what a shock...

    After playing the beta, im really not surprised. I'm all for innovation in MMOs but this was so dire.

    shortest life mmo ever?

  • zozart #5 5 years ago

    This is most unfortunate.

  • Pirotic #6 5 years ago

    the golden rule here is not to make shit MMO's.

  • Krun #7 5 years ago

    Good ideas are easy to find. Everyone believes they have at least one, most people think they have a lot more.

    They had that 1% of inspiration that's needed to make something new. But fell far short of the the 99% of work needed to make it work. Like most of us do.

  • MetalDog #8 5 years ago

    Roleplay heavy mmo's have been around a long time in the form of MUDs and MUSHes. I did try Seed and I wish they'd been less ambitious on the graphics front and built a more solid method of communication between players (the cornerstone of roleplay). I'm still not sure it would work, though. I've never yet seen decent roleplaying happen in a graphical enviroment. You get the occasional 'prithee' effort, but not the real deal. Something about using your eyes instead of your imagination to fill in the view seems to mess it up.