 | Digital Release | PC February 04, 2011 (EU, NA) |
| Delisting | February 09, 2012 | |
| Developer | Masthead Studios (2011-2012) SilentFuture (2013-2017) |
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| Publisher | Iceberg Interactive (2011-2012) SilentFuture (2014-2017) |
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| Available On | None | |
| Links | Earthrise website (2011) Earthrise website (2014) |
Delisting
Earthrise was shut down on February 9th, 2012. In a press release provided to numerous gaming publications, Director of Masthead Studios, Atanas Atanasov, detailed the shortcomings of the game’s release:
One year after the launch of the game, we have decided to stop the Earthrise servers. Earthrise was released too early and did not meet the expectations of its fans” said Atanas Atanasov, Director of Masthead Studios. “We did our best to revive the game in 2011, but the time was not enough to keep up with the user requirements. There is a huge interest in high quality open world sandbox MMORPGs, unfortunately the big publishers do not show any interest in the genre. It is unfortunate that low-budget companies like ours are trying to bring innovativeness in the already saturated MMO market. I hope that one day an independent studio will be able to release the long anticipated open world sandbox MMO, which everyone is talking about, but no one is making. We tried, but did not succeed. We would like to apologize to those who were disappointed from Earthrise and to thank everyone who supported us during the years.”
Atanas Atanasov – Director of Masthead Studios
In addendum, a note regarding a potential free-to-play future for Earthrise was attached to the press release, as posted on the official Earthrise forums:
The free to play version of Earthrise, which was planned for 2012 may be released only if there is investor or publisher interest.
We tried to make better game in terms of server and client performance. That means to us that we had to fix over 100 problems, reported by you or by our Q&A team, before we start the F2P model. However the latest internal test showed that we need at least 4 more months to complete this task. It is too long period, and we don’t have the resources to do that. Atanas did his best to find investors, but it is a very hard task during the world economic crisis.
We don’t abandon the Earthrise project completely. But it will be postponed for better times. We even thought to continue providing services for game for free, but it would still require investments. Instead of that we decided to focus on other projects, but it will be Ostiak, who can give additional information. Meanwhile we will keep the Earthrise forums and we will still use them. I hope one day I will put much better news there.
Publisher interest would soon come, as on a press release posted on May 10th, 2012, SilentFuture announced that they would be taking over development of the free-to-play version of Earthrise. Development under SilentFuture would continue intermittently for the next few years, and an open alpha release of their version of Earthrise would release on May 22nd, 2014.
The last public update from the Earthrise team was in March of 2016, when the game was added to the Steam Greenlight program. The Earthrise website was last confirmed to be online on May 26th, 2017, and as best as we can tell, the game most likely shut down at the end of 2017.
About the Game
Earthrise is a post-apocalyptic science fiction MMORPG set in the distant future. From one server, Players worldwide are competing for the chance to conquer Enterra. Earthrise gives you various choices to forge your own destiny with features like a unique skill-based advancement system and player-driven economy, as well as extensive, meaningful player-vs.-player combat.
Join the game world now and experience this awesome third person shooter style combat game, and fight with NPC opponents or real life players. Step into the future and claim your own piece of land with the non-instanced territorial warfare system, unique for the MMORPG world.