News

Hi, fellow gamers and MMO enthusiasts!

After a good month of teasing, we’re thrilled to announce that Fractured Online is being taken over by a new studio: Happy Cauldron Games (HCG)!

If you’ve followed our updates this last couple of months, you will know already that in December we had to let go of the whole team, while me and the other two founders continued working unpaid.

As the three of us had actually been working full-time unpaid for the last 2 years (because we earned barely enough to pay our employees), you will understand how the situation was no longer sustainable for us on a personal level.

Well, when all hope seemed lost… the game was saved!

Old Team, New Team

Me and the other two co-founders of Dynamight Studios (and even some former team members!) will be joining HCG as employees, ensuring continuity and expertise as the project moves forward.

Alongside us, new hires will bolster the team, including an experienced community manager who will work to improve communication and engagement with our players—an activity where we’ve seriously underdelivered in these last few months.

We know how much you have been asking for this, and so I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear it’s finally being delivered!

Meet The Buyer

HCG is led by Duncan Davis, a name some of you might already be familiar with—his nickname on our Discord server is TaNaHaRa. And no, no—he didn’t buy Fractured Online to turn it into a crypto scam. I’m looking at you, commenters on MMO websites! 😉

Duncan is a passionate Fractured Online player who genuinely believes in the game’s vision and wants to enhance both its gameplay and technology. Unlike a game publisher, he isn’t looking for quick monetization but is instead focused on long-term improvements.

His passion for the game and commitment to its evolution make him the perfect fit to take Fractured Online to the next level.

Upcoming Changes

Let’s address the elephant in the room: the team at Dynamight Studios has always been very small for such an ambitious game, and the situation worsened at the end of 2022 after the break-up with our publisher.

Because of this, we’ve had to make several tough choices during development—some features were cut entirely, others were simplified, and some were released in a half-finished state to be improved later on (and never actually completed). Every time we had to make such a decision, it was with great struggle, but always out of necessity.

Now, with proper financial backing, we have the opportunity to revisit many of those decisions. Some features will be “just” improved, while others might see a complete overhaul—but always with the same goal in mind: delivering the sandbox MMORPG that PvE and PvP players alike can call home.

That being said, major improvements don’t happen overnight. In fact, we are embarking on one of the biggest technical challenges yet: switching to a new backend engine. This means that while the future is bright, (a lot of) patience will be required.

A New Engine

At the end of January, we officially started porting Fractured Online to a new backend engine / hosting platform: Coherence. Coherence is an innovative multiplayer technology that will allow us to create new content more easily, particularly when it comes to instanced content like dungeons—something that was nearly impossible with our previous tech.

Please be aware that our old backend engine, much like Coherence, was deeply embedded in the game’s codebase. While this switch isn’t as drastic as, say, moving from Unity to Unreal, it still requires rewriting a large portion of the game’s code—a process that will take months of hard work.

We didn’t make this transition in the end of 2022 because Coherence (the only really viable solution) wasn’t mature enough back then, and due to our usual lack of resources. Now, with the right backing, we can make it happen—and, I promise you, it will do SO much good for the game!

The Road Ahead

In the coming days, HCG will take over all our official communication channels. A new channel will be created on Discord to document the porting process step by step, providing transparency and insight into our progress. Additionally, we are considering a public board or timeline to track development in a more analytical way.

As for the current version of Fractured Online, HCG will soon share an official statement outlining the next steps. Stay tuned!

This is a huge milestone for Fractured Online, and we’re incredibly excited about what the future holds. Thank you for sticking with us on this journey—once again, when many thought this must be the end, there’s actually much more to come!

DISCUSS