Development on Peter Molyneux's game Godus has halted, according to Eurogamer.
Godus is a "god game" designed by Peter Molyneux and developed by 22cans. It launched on Steam Early Access in September 2013 and remains in Steam Early Access at this time. The game was relaunched as Godus Wars in February of 2016 (also in Steam Early Access). Mr. Molyneux is perhaps best known for games of this style such as 2001's Black & White.
Sources tell Eurogamer that development on Godus has entirely halted with the developer moving almost all of its team to their next game The Trail. The Trail is another title being designed by Peter Molyneux.
Eurogamer was informed that lead designer Konrad Naszynski had been laid off earlier in 2016. 22cans CEO Simon Phillips has stated that Naszynski was actually a contractor and simply did not renew his contract. According to Phillips, Konrad Naszynski was assigned to create levels for Godus Wars and had completed his work for the most recent update. They stated that they would talk to Konrad Nazynski when they needed more content for the game.
Simon Phillips denied the rumor that development on Godus had halted, stating:
"No. Godus is an ongoing project, on both PC and mobile," he said. "There's lots of areas to support on the project, as you can imagine. We have a bit of a rhythm in moving from PC to mobile and so on."
Furthermore, Mr. Phillips had the following to say about the claim that 100% of 22cans' staff had shifted to working on The Trail:
"Not quite," he said. "We shift our resources around depending on what we want to achieve, be that design, PC or mobile code, art resources and so on."
Although 22cans insists that development continues, the last update to the game was on March 2nd. The most recent announcement on the Steam Community page was on March 18th. The 22cans website has regularly posted updates on the progress of Godus. The most recent post is from June 19th, 2016 and talks about design progress on the combat system.
One of Eurogamer's sources stated that 22cans did indeed have plans to leave Early Access in early 2016. However, they decided to focus their development efforts on The Trail in order to keep the studio's finances healthy.
What do you think of how the development of Godus progressed? Do you think the game is abandoned at this point? Let us know in the comments below!
