Perpetual cans Gods & Heroes

By Robert Purchese Published 11 October, 2007

Focusing on Star Trek Online.

Perpetual Entertainment has stopped work on massively-multiplayer online game Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, and the project is now on "indefinite hold".

Confirmation of its demise came from developer boss Chris McKibbin, who wrote an open letter to fans on the official website - just weeks after announcing that the game had been temporarily delayed.

"The development team established some very lofty and ambitious goals when the initial work was started on Gods & Heroes," explained McKibbin. "Recently, we took a step back to evaluate the competitive landscape, the game's current state, and the overall goals for our organisation."

"And while we are truly proud of and pleased with what we have created in Gods & Heroes, we also realize that achieving the level of quality and polish that we are committed to will take a significant investment."

Perpetual will instead focus its resources on Star Trek Online, offering jobs to those made redundant by the recent move. It perhaps confirms observations that the traditional fantasy genre is too crowded and that a strong brand is the bread and butter of a successful MMORPG.

Star Trek Online is currently in the early stages of development, with open beta and retail release dates yet to be determined. Head over to the official website to catch up on developer logs and all sorts of concept art.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (7) Latest comment 4 years ago

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

  • kallenai #1 4 years ago

    Another MMO bites the bullet because of being rushed by the publishers to get it to market when it was clearly not ready. It's pretty depressing really how often this is happening in the MMO market now, Vanguard being a prime example and Tabula Rasa heading in the same direction. LOTR Online to a lesser extent suffers from a similar problem in that the game has about 2-3 months content, but as soon as you hit the level cap there is simply nothing to do, the gamer is left with the sense that it could have been improved with another few months development.

    Seems publishers watched Blizzard make a mint out of World of Warcraft and decided they wanted a bit of the cake so push developers to get new mmo's to market before they are properly thought out or developed. Tested Gods and Heroes and although it wasn't going to set the MMO scene alight it had some novel ideas, so its a pity its been canned.
    Edited by 1 at 11/10/07 @ 13:12

  • Brogan #2 4 years ago

    When you quote someone's written statement can we not get rid of the stupid Z's, please. Surly it would be fairly easy to do some thing like this....

    "... we also realie..."

    just gets on my tits is all.

  • Wrestlevania #3 4 years ago

    ...aw crap. :-(
    Edited by 1 at 11/10/07 @ 13:58

  • Bumhug360 #4 4 years ago

    "Another MMO bites the bullet because of being rushed by the publishers to get it to market when it was clearly not ready. It's pretty depressing really how often this is happening in the MMO market now, Vanguard being a prime example and Tabula Rasa heading in the same direction. "

    Tabula Rasa rushed! Its been in development for 7 years (officialy 6 as Garriott wasnt supposed to be working on anything for a year after he left EA).

  • Bleh #5 4 years ago

    It's just a shame that they stopped with the game but I can understand it. I was in the beta and it was really great game but the game just lacked to much to stand off against all the other, no crafting and pvp from the start. That's stuff you really going to need if you want to survive with a mmo in my opinion.

  • AOFanboi #6 4 years ago

    <em>Tabula Rasa rushed! Its been in development for 7 years (officialy 6 as Garriott wasnt supposed to be working on anything for a year after he left EA).</em>

    Well, you need to count from the last total redesign, so the real dev time is probably shorter. :)

    I liked as comment I saw that they refocus because G&H would compete with Age of Conan - and possibly lose - while Star Trek would face hardly any competition in the sci-fi field. A very good statement at the horrid mess that Star Wars Galaxies has turned into. There's basically just EVE and Vendetta out there, and both of those are closer to Elite than to a traditional MMO.

  • mcmonkeyplc #7 4 years ago

    Early stages of development! It was announced in 2005!