Update: Team 17 sent over a statement in response to our inquiries, which unfortunately is just a slight expansion on the Facebook post.
"After a long consideration between Lilith owner Chris Kesler and ourselves, we have reached a mutual agreement to end our collaboration on publishing Allison Road under Team17’s Games label," it says. "We love the concept and value Chris' talent highly, but sometime things pan out differently than expected as game development and publishing have so many layers of complexity. The whole team here wish all the best to Chris on his current and future projects for which, before being a business partner, we are also a fan."
Original story:
The PT-inspired horror game Allison Road was cancelled a couple of weeks ago, a development of great disappointment for gamers who enjoy inflicting gut-churning terror on themselves. No reason for the sudden canning was given, but a message posted on the official Allison Road Twitter feed said a statement would be forthcoming in a few days. It took a little longer than that, but one recently appeared on the Allison Road Facebook page.
Unfortunately, it's not terribly informative either. “After a long consideration between Team17 and ourselves, we have reached a mutual agreement to end our collaboration on publishing Allison Road under Team17’s Games label,” the statement says. “Sometime things pan out differently than expected as game development and publishing have so many layers of complexity... We’d like to especially thank everyone for their support through-out, it has and will always be appreciated!”
That's the extent of it, and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, many of them asked in (often unhappy) comments: Why not go back to Kickstarter? Why not try to pick up with another publisher? Why is the game suddenly so dead without a publishing deal, when that's how it initially began? The statement has an unmistakable tone of finality to it (and the Lilith Ltd. website is down, which is never a good sign), yet there's nothing even close to an explanation: Just a vague allusion to trouble in a partnership that got underway—with great enthusiasm—less than a year ago.
I've reached out to both Lilith Ltd. and Team 17 to try to find out more about what led to the breakdown. I'll let you know what I hear.
Thanks, Gamasutra.
