Well here is the official word we’ve been waiting for regarding Gods and Heroes:

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears…

Loyal and faithful community members and Beta testers, thank you for your support, help, and understanding during the Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising development process.

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

The Perpetual team is faced with a unique challenge of simultaneously developing both Gods & Heroes and Star Trek Online in addition to growing our Online Game Platform business. After assessing all of Perpetual’s opportunities, we have made the decision to put the development of Gods & Heroes on indefinite hold.

I want to express my overwhelming gratitude to the community, engineers, designers, artists, animators, and the game services team for the support and effort that has gone into Gods & Heroes.

Moving forward, we’re shifting our collective focus, resources and development efforts to Perpetual’s Platform Services division and Star Trek Online, thereby ensuring that the game lives up to the high level of expectation set by the dedicated Star Trek fan base.

Again, I would personally like to thank all of the Gods & Heroes supporters who have been with us from the beginning. Hopefully, your continued support will be as valuable to our future endeavors as it was with Gods & Heroes..

Vade in pace,
Chris McKibbin

 As I told a friend earlier this evening, I’m not really sad (or shocked per se) to see this happen to G&H.  I had seen enough of the game to know that it didn’t really interest me on any particular level.  So from that perspective, it’s not a big loss to me personally.  However, what does concern me is the people that will certainly lose their jobs as a result of this.  I hope they migrate a lot of their talent over to STO. 

What greater impact does this have, will this have, on the genre?  It’s hard to tell.  Did Perpetual just spread itself too thin - did they shoot for the moon and later realize they could only get into low orbit?  Did the money just run out?  Was the game fundamentally not good enough to compete in the market?  Maybe it was a mix of all of the above, or maybe none.  I don’t work there so I can’t say for sure.  But it seems to me that something like this will make an already skittish (cautious) MMO genre become even more so. 

It’s a crapshoot in many ways, and a very expensive one at that.  Even if you think you’re taking a calculated, educated risk developing one of these things, there are a lot of moving parts and people who expect an ROI.  At the end of the day someone made the call to pull the plug on G&H, and I can only assume it was the right call.  I never like to see an MMO perish, but I don’t think I’ll be personally shedding many tears for G&H.  RIP.

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Put this squarely in the “rumor”  “seems likely” category for now even though there’s been no official confirmation as of yet.  I spotted this just now via Virgin Worlds, which linked to the “news” at The Escapist.   Here’s what is being said:

We’ve received word from an anonymous source that Perpetual Entertainment, developers of Gods and Heroes and Star Trek Online, will dissolve in the near future.

The remnants of the company have been acquired by a major independent game developer, which will purchase Star Trek Online and Perpetual’s game platform assets. It’s unknown whether Gods and Heroes will be purchased, but the leadership has already offered certain members of the team a position in the new company, working on the Star Trek Online team. The majority of the Gods and Heroes team will be laid off, so the game’s future doesn’t seem bright.

Phone calls to Perpetual were not immediately returned.

So, if this is true, it sounds like G&H might cease to exist, while STO might live on but be a long ways out.  If this is true, my thoughts are with all the devs who may be laid off. 

So Warhammer Online announces a 2 month beta shutdown (and quite possibly a delayed release as well), Tabula Rasa pushed back it’s release two weeks, AoC was already pushed back, Spellborn has been pushed back and now it seems that G&H might be extinct.  It’s been an interesting 2007 indeed - heck let’s throw in the VG debacle just for old times sake.

Will certainly update here to either confirm this is true and give more info, or to retract this if it turns out to be false.

EDIT:  More info from WarCry:

Perpetual Entertainment has indefinitely delayed (essentially canceled) Gods and Heroes. The company will continue work on their development platform and Star Trek Online, and continue its operations in the same San Francisco studio under the same management. Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising, though, is no more.

Our source tells us that the majority of the Gods and Heroes development team has been let go as part of the move, which comes only a few weeks after they had downsized and pushed back the release date. The Star Trek Online team, those who worked on the Perpetual Platform (which was recently licensed to BioWare) and a small number of people from the Gods and Heroes team will be remain with the company.

WarCry will bring you more details as the story unfolds.

Update 8:28 PM EST: We originally reported that Perpetual Entertainment had been acquired by another firm, but according to further sources at Perpetual this not in fact the case. It will continue on as described above with new investors.

More from TTH:

The industry types are buzzing like bees about this one.

Inside sources are reporting that Perpetual Entertainment, makers of the upcoming MMOGs Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising and Star Trek Online are being bought out by an undisclosed studio. WarCry is reporting that according to their sources it may not be a complete buy-out, but rumors are flying like crazy and nothing will be positive until an official announcement goes out.

Other sources indicate that the company involved in the acquisition/investment is likely to be Foundation 9 Entertainment (http://www.f9e.com/), although this is unconfirmed at this time.

Keep an eye on Ten Ton Hammer for further news as the situation develops!

Well that’s starting to sound a bit more “official”, but again, nothing has been directly released by Perpetual at this time that I’m aware of.  Again, my thoughts and prayers go out to all affected by the layoff.  I’ve had to lay off people before and it’s not a fun thing to do, at all.  Seems that G&H is definitely gone and who knows how this will impact the timeframe for STO, although really they weren’t getting into real “production” until 2008 anyhow.

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