Magna Mundi cancelled by publisher, developers promise legal response

Magna Mundi, the grandest of grand strategy games, has been cancelled by publishers Paradox Interactive. In a statement put out by Paradox and spotted by RPS , the company explained that they've been unhappy with the game's progress towards release. "We have seen this project drag on and the code we have gotten has not shown significant improvement for many months. Some old and known problems persists and new ones appear with each delivery."

Although it seems the developers disagree, and hope to still release the game. Read on for grand sadness.

Magna Mundi started life as a mod for Europa Universalis 3, but it was popular enough for Paradox to think it had legs as a full game. I saw the game at Paradox's yearly preview event two years ago, and it was absurdly vast in scope, simulating 400 countries over 400 years of history. It looked like the rest of Paradox's line up - which at the time included Pride of Nations and Crusader Kings 2 - combined in to a single game. Magna Mundi was then conspicuous in its absence at the same event this year, suggesting problems have been brewing for a while.

Paradox's Mattias Lilja, the executive producer on Magna Mundi, followed up the original statement with more detail in a forum post . He talks about a lack of trust in the developer and poor leadership of the development team. It's fairly damning.

Developers Universo Virtual would disagree completely, though. They say the game is ready for release, the "cancellation" is bizarre, and that they'll fight Paradox in court. In a post of his own on the Magna Mundi forums , Carlos Gustavo Benavente promises that "the 'cancellation' issue is just a detail on everything that's going to be settled there." This is going to get ugly fast.

Hopefully all parties involve can resolve the issues satisfactorily, because really I just want to play the game. It looked amazing.