Notorious Studios has just announced that Eldegarde, a fantasy extraction game that we said had ‘great potential’ in our review, is being sunsetted indefinitely on March 31. It graduated from early access on Steam in January, hitting 1.0 and seeing an uptick in players, but it wasn’t enough to render the game sustainable.
Chris Kaleiki, the founder of Notorious and a former Blizzard veteran, posted a heartfelt message in the game’s Discord server just hours ago, at the time of writing. From March 31, Eldegarde will be taken offline, forever removing it from the Steam storefront. There’s a chance of an offline version surfacing, but it’s a pipe dream at this point.
The Extraction Realm is a Tough One to Weather
Extraction games typically have a tough battle to stay relevant in a space so heavily dominated by big hitters. Any extraction title that tries to surface these days has to contend with the likes of Escape from Tarkov, ARC Raiders, and, as of today, Bungie’s Marathon.
Eldegarde started life as Legacy: Steel and Sorcery, but the team pivoted last year and rebranded the game to Eldegarde. Here’s a snippet from the review we posted for the game in January when it hit 1.0, a review that now seems like a touch of foresight:
I love the visuals and depth of the game, but it just needs more juice to retain players for long enough for it to evolve. It’s a relatively safe introduction for players wanting an extraction experience, but I fear it might never become much more than that, and that has made me mournful more than anything else.
Eldegarde wasn’t going to win awards, but it had an unmistakable charm. It felt like Fable mixed with ARC Raiders, finessed with a touch of World of Warcraft, and for fans of MMO and extraction games, it was a neat addition to the space.
Notorious Studios stumped up a roadmap, introduced some paid features, and tried to flesh out the game with new experiences, creatures, gameplay mechanics, and events, but it wasn’t enough.
Chris Kaleiki, the studio’s founder and CEO, wrote on Discord:
It has been a while since we’ve done an MTD or caught up about Eldegarde, mainly because we’ve been figuring out the best next step after the 1.0 release earlier this year. After much reflection, we have made the difficult decision to sunset Eldegarde (a fancy gamedev term to basically mean shutting down).
The game will be coming offline March 31st.
I have a ton of thoughts and reflections behind the decision to do this, which I’ve put into the post I hope you’ll read on Steam, but above all I wanted to express my gratitude for this community and for our players playing our game. Even though it is unfortunate and sad, I want to celebrate the life the game did have this past year, with the four seasons of content, 28 MTDs we did with you, and, of course, the memories and experiences we created together in the game.
In the broader post on Steam, an ember of hope for Eldegarde fans surfaced:
Notorious and I still believe in the long-term opportunity for Eldegarde, and even today hope that we can resurrect it at some point. While most of the team at Notorious has moved on to the next chapter of their careers, a small group has volunteered to convert the game to be playable offline, or perhaps with a client-side server.
This is a challenging endeavor that will take a significant amount of time and may be not be achieveable anytime soon (if ever—this isn’t a promise!).
The team confirmed that, if you bought Eldegarde in the last two weeks, you’re eligible for a full refund, but nobody else can buy the game from this point on.
Did you get a chance to play Eldegarde? Let us know what you thought about the game on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Crimson Desert’s console specs have been revealed
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
It seemed neat, but also seemed like it was doomed to fail from the beginning. Ex-Blizzard devs make WoW-But-Different was never going to have general appeal. Barely any WoW players even play PvP, so it’s like “who’s the audience.” The PvE sounded like it should have been an offline / co-op mode instead of keeping the large lobbies, and it should have been part of the game from the beginning.
Also, Eldegarde wasn’t a good rebrand. It’s more generic and forgettable than Legacy: Steel and Sorcery. Eldegarde sounds like a pay to win mobile game that you’d see in sketchy ads.