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Dec 23, 2017
8,100


The End of Worlds Adrift

At Bossa Studios we love taking risks and making stuff that no one dares to do in order to create great original experiences for players. Worlds Adrift was an ambitious undertaking for us: a community crafted MMO built on freedom and player agency with multiplayer physics, set in a huge world. We are proud of what we achieved with the game since development began five years ago out of a humble game jam.
We are immensely grateful for every Traveller that's come to experience this community crafted world. However, Worlds Adrift just hasn't reached the level of popularity it needs to continue. The challenges that came with our ambitious project meant that all our work went into making the game work rather than making it the experience we wanted it to be. As a result we failed at making a game that could capture the imaginations of millions. Creating an MMO like Worlds Adrift is a huge financial commitment and unfortunately the game is just no longer commercially viable.

More at the link https://www.worldsadrift.com/

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I'm extremely sad at the news. I loved World's Adrift. It had a ton of potential and it was a breath of fresh air. Building your own airship and flying around to user created islands was very fun for me. Sadly, it was never a popular game, and the developers had alot of trouble developing the game on SpatialOS. They would add one thing, but something else would break or become problematic. With that said, below are some images of my adventures:

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Thank you Bossa studios and World's Adrift, it was fun and a pleasure to play this game.
 
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bluexy

Comics Enabler & Freelance Games Journalist
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
14,510
That's sad to hear. I played an alpha version of the game quite some time ago and it had some really exciting ideas. It just never seemed to come together to become like, a whole, marketable game. Hope Bossa's staying strong and able to move forward.
 

javiergame4

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,642
Never heard of this game but oh well. Hopefully the workers aren't laid off/find new opportunities.
 
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Shinobido Heart
Dec 23, 2017
8,100
I'm gonna do my best to make it to the ''End of the World'' event.

Right now, their discord is full of sadness. :(
 
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Shinobido Heart
Dec 23, 2017
8,100
I have never heard of this game which may explain its cancellation.

Not many people did unfortunately. I found World's Adrift a couple of years ago by complete accident when I was searching for a new MMORPG to play.

It was like, finding a diamond in a sea of sand. A bit rough around the edges and lacked polish, but held great potential.
 

Lucifonz

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,132
United Kingdom
It's a real shame, honestly think they had something there with more time, resources and correct marketing. I understand the business perspective though.
 

I KILL PXLS

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,520
Signed up for the beta (maybe even the alpha), but never got around to playing it and never realized it actually released. Sad that it didn't find an audience.
 
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Shinobido Heart
Dec 23, 2017
8,100
Hopefully they do something with the game. They are currently in discussions on what can be done to save the assets or to do something with the free Island Creator.

Update 31 is on the way as well.

A lot of work has already been put into this game, I'd hate to see it go and honestly, I would like for this game to stick around.
 
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Shinobido Heart
Dec 23, 2017
8,100
Maybe they should give out the code to the comunity so it gets "crowd-developed"

Sadly, that's not an option.

From one of the developers:

"Since i'm seeing this asked a lot: Make it Open Source.

The reason why Worlds Adrift (and many large games) don't go Open Source when they are sunset is simple: they are in part built with third party tools, plugins and licensed code we cannot share or open source ourselves. Without these the game doesn't run nor compile. Going over and removing all these instances is a huge undertaking as well. This is why it's rare for a game going Open Source, it has little to do with willingness to do so.

Make it P2P, allow people to host their own servers Unlike our other games, Worlds's network is built on top of SpatialOS, a proprietary tech. Worlds does not run without it, nor can it be hosted outside of SpatialOS's infrastructure. It stops us from both making it P2P or allow anyone to host their own servers, unfortunately."
 

element

Member
Oct 27, 2017
920
This game was hurt by the SpatialOS vs Unity fight, as with some of their own decisions.

People are going to have to get used to games sunsetting as we move into more games using significant online infostructure, especially licensed tools and middleware.
 
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Shinobido Heart
Dec 23, 2017
8,100
This game was hurt by the SpatialOS vs Unity fight, as with some of their own decisions.

People are going to have to get used to games sunsetting as we move into more games using significant online infostructure, especially licensed tools and middleware.

I remember that, but I don't think there was any negative impact to Worlds Adrift. I could be wrong though.


 

Redmoon

Member
Oct 26, 2017
122
I remember watching a bunch of the larger streamers play this back when it was new. Looked fun for what it was at the time, and was going to get it later after release. Sad to see it go.
 

Onix555

Member
Apr 23, 2019
3,380
UK
I've put over 120 hours into the game, and tbh i'm not shocked about this. I should preface that I really, really, really wanted to like this game. The idea of a completely free physics airships MMO blew my mind when I first saw it in action and I desperately wanted to play it for myself. However when I actually got the game, what I found was a broken, empty game with bad janky gameplay and pretty much nothing to do. People complain about the PVP, but to be real; the only reason PVP got so insane in WA is because there's no real content so people get very bored. Pretty much all of the islands are player made so theres the argument the devs weren't even responsible for actual playable content in the game.

As well as that, the developers themselves weren't great. They are extremely agitated at the first sign of criticism; and while I don't have them now since they were from years ago, I did receive extremely rude messages from one of the devs when trying to bring up a still to this day broken feature (that being Manta's).

Overall its a shame, made some friends in WA, and had some bits where it was fun; but overall it was mainly the dumb hope that I would get to the good bit. Never really did.

Also the 20-30GB or whatever it is, is now a dead weight on my PC lol. GAAS gonna rock in the future.
 

Smash-It Stan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,261
Was in the closed Alpha and basically nothing worked other than the swinging.

I joked "spend millions making a open world mmo but people just want to swing" and heard a developer wasn't happy with that comment. Pretty sure no one in my group got any more invites after that :p
 

element

Member
Oct 27, 2017
920
I remember that, but I don't think there was any negative impact to Worlds Adrift. I could be wrong though.
While it might not have had a negative impact from a player perspective, imagine being a dev or an investor. You spend three or four years building something with two pieces of licensed technology and then all the sudden one of them says your license is being revoked. I'm sure it led to a certain amount of panic on the dev team. Do we need to find a different network platform? Do we need to ditch Unity and port to UE4? What is the cost of doing either? Is it even viable to invest?
While no direct impact on players. I'm sure from a business perspective it was 'We built something that someone else can pull the plug on. Should we continue?'