ReROLL now officially cancelled; little compensation given to backers

ReROLL has been officially cancelled due to lack of funding and failure to find a publisher. People who have backed the project are being given free copies of BIOS, an FPS title in Steam Early Access.

ReROLL—an isometric open-world multiplayer survival action RPG by Pixyul, a development studio founded by two former employees of Ubisoft Montreal: Julien Cuny and Louis-Pierre Pharand—was officially cancelled last week (thanks, Polygon). As E3 2016 was still ongoing, an e-mail was sent to all supporters of the title (meaning the people who have bought things from the online shop to donate money for the game’s development), stating that “the development of ReROLL is over”. The ambitious project, announced back in 2014, aimed to recreate the entire Earth surface for the purposes of the game world with the use of drones as well as topographic and municipal data. Alas, to make such an idea come true, one needs a substantial amount of money, an amount that Pixyul didn’t have, even with their fans’ support. Having failed to secure the necessary funding elsewhere (including government programs), which brings us to the lack of a publisher, apparently there was no other choice but to cancel the development. Sadly, no refunds will be given. However, the developers decided to give their supporters free copies of BIOS, their FPS game which is still in the Early Access phase, and, according to SteamSpy data, far from popular.

We decided to take a different route and pitched to entertainment partners to secure a linear ReROLL project, that would have in the end funded the game. After months and weeks of discussion, we had a verbal agreement, we just needed to get this down on paper and have the lawyers finalized the deal. In the last few years, we faced many rejections, many after long and intensive negotiations. We really believed that this one was the one. But it wasn’t. We never received a contract. The deal was pulled off the table. Still today we don’t really know why. This one really hurt. Recently, unfortunately we were faced with another negative response. After being so close on multiple occasions, today, we have to face the fact that this rejection was our last hope to secure the necessary funding to pursue the development and complete the game. This is why we are officially announcing that the development of ReROLL is over. We want all of you to know that we gave our best shot and like you, we are extremely disappointed that ReROLL will not become a reality. It sucks. All of this sucks. We know many of you will be disappointed and even pissed. We understand that. We should have been better at communicating our progress. Not to give excuses, but we were caught in the process with potential partners that wished we stayed silent on our progress.

The game’s website as well as its Twitter profile have both been taken down. Its online store is theoretically still available, although “down for maintenance”. It is also worth remembering that the prices of character bundles started at $19.99 and reached $274.99 (again: thanks, Polygon). Given that some players have spent a lot of money there, and we are talking about three-digit numbers here, a 15-dollar Early Access game may seem like poor, if any, consolation.