ReRoll was announced in early 2014 by a pair of former Ubisoft developers, Julien Cuny and Louis-Pierre Pharand, who had come together to form a studio called Pixyul. The project was incredibly ambitious, as the team aimed to “reproduce, accurately at scale, the whole planet.” That would be this planet, Earth, scanned in its entirety with HD camera-equipped drones and then converted to 3D. “Once in a game engine, these 3D objects will generate our game environment,” the announcement trailer explains. “That world will be the playground for our first game, ReRoll.”
Funding for ReRoll was being derived primarily through the sales of in-game items offered through its website, kind of like a DIY Kickstarter, minus the safeguard of things like funding goals—something Phil specifically pointed out in his original report. And sure enough, it has ended badly: The studio announced on Reddit over the weekend that development of ReRoll has been halted, and those who gave money to it will get just about nothing in return.
Development started well, according to the message, but it quickly became apparent that the money raised through crowdfunding, plus the developers' own investment, wasn't going to be enough to get the job done. Pixyul pursued deals with publishers and investors, applied for various sorts of government programs, and “pitched to entertainment partners to secure a linear ReRoll project, that would have in the end funded the game.” But none of the deals worked out, and in the wake of another recent “negative response” the team said it must now “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,” the message says. “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.”
Supporters of ReRoll are being given copies of the FPS Bios, Pixyul's “other game,” which is available for $15 as an Early Access release on Steam. The studio said that's “the best it can do,” but people don't seem terribly impressed with the gesture of generosity. Unfortunately for those calling for refunds, that incomplete game probably is the best they're going to get: The ReRoll website is gone (aside from a remnant of the shop, and looking at those prices you can see why people would be upset), and the ReRoll Twitter account and Pixyul Facebook page are gone as well.
Thanks, Polygon.
