Celeste and Towerfall studio Extremely OK Games has revealed that its ambitious Metroidvania platformer Earthblade has been canceled owing to an internal studio dispute.
In a post on the official EXOK website titled "Final Earthblade Update" (just in case you weren't absolutely sure the game was done), the studio describes the cancellation as "a huge, heartbreaking, and yet relieving failure". EXOK head Maddy Thorson says the decision to cancel was actually made in December.
According to Thorson, a "fracture" began forming in 2024, with her and coworker Noel Berry on one side and art director Pedro Medeiros on another. Specifically, the dispute revolved around "the IP rights of Celeste", and it's a dispute Thorson says she "won't be detailing publicly".
The dispute, which Thorson calls "a very difficult and heartbreaking process", was eventually resolved, but she and Berry eventually agreed to go their separate ways with Medeiros, who originally announced his departure from EXOK back in November.
Thorson says that the dispute with Medeiros caused her and Berry to take a look at Earthblade and ask themselves whether continuing its development would be "worth the pain". Together, they concluded that working on the game had become "exhausting", leading them to "admit defeat".
She also goes on to say that fans shouldn't blame Medeiros, and that he and the team on his game Neverway "aren't the enemy". Treating them as such will make you unwelcome "in any EXOK community", she says.
If you're wondering exactly what Earthblade is (or was), it was an exploration-based action platformer that would have offered "seamless exploration, challenging combat, and countless mysteries to pick apart".
Originally revealed in 2021, EXOK announced in early 2024 that Earthblade wouldn't be coming out that year. It's very likely the studio had already begun to grapple with the problems that would cause the game's cancellation even then.
As for what's next for EXOK, Thorson says the goal now is to "wipe the slate clean" and to "refocus...back to smaller-scale projects". We'll have to wait and see where that goes in future.
