Developer Lightforge Games announces it is laying off “the majority” of its staff as it halts development on ambitious upcoming RPG Project ORCS. The Dungeons and Dragons style tool built by former Blizzard and Epic developers was designed to encourage player-led storytelling and collaborative roleplaying, but a failure to secure sufficient funding has led to the downsizing of the studio as development is paused.
My Project ORCS preview earlier this year had me excited by the potential of the social RPG, which offers up a framework for groups to run campaigns where players – one acting as the Dungeon Master for the rest – could work together to build maps, decide on themes, and ultimately set up interesting avenues for emergent storytelling. It was a really clever idea, and the basic pieces were in place to make something that might have offered a more welcoming entry point to a more tabletop-style roleplaying experience. Unfortunately, development on Project ORCS has now been halted.
“Beginning today, LFG is downsizing to a skeleton crew at the end of the month – a tough message for us to deliver. This means we are pausing the development of Project ORCS,” Lightforge Games writes in a post to its website. “The remaining staff will regroup to determine what a viable path may be for the project and studio.”
Lightforge confirms that it was “unable to secure the necessary funding to finish creating Project ORCS,” and says, “We’re making this call now so that we can provide support to our wonderful team of devs: providing them with time to stabilize, working together to help folks as they re-enter the job market, and finding new positions to continue our passion for making games.”
“While today is a sad day for Lightforge, I’m very proud of the work we’ve done and the team we’ve built over the past four years,” studio co-founder and CEO Matt Schembari writes. “We always knew this was an ambitious long shot of a project, but we pursued it because of a shared passion for collaborative storytelling and with a fearlessness to do something different both as a project and as a studio.”
“For now I’m going to hold on [sharing] any retrospectives while we get through the process over the next few weeks and regroup to find a viable future for the studio,” Schembari concludes. “However, I do intend to share what I can in hopes that telling our story can help our friends at other studios. The journey continues – just on a different road – and I’d like to thank everyone who’s been a part of it thus far. Much love to all.”
The Project ORCS Discord and social channels will be shut down over the coming week, although the team at Lightforge encourages anyone who’s enjoyed the game to share their stories and memories of it.
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