Ion, a space survival game that was in development for the Xbox One in Windows is no more. According to a report from Eurogamer, developer RocketWertz has stopped working on the ambitious MMO which was unveiled nearly two years ago during Microsoft’s E3 2015 press event.
Dean Hall, head of RocketWerkz explained in an interview with Eurogamer that “we’re not actively working on Ion, no. I am not involved in that, no. Nor is RocketWerkz studio in New Zealand.” Following its 2015 announcement, the game studio did not share a lot of details about Ion. The official description on the game’s website notes:
From the creator of DayZ and inspired by the cult-classic Space Station 13; ION is a truly-emergent massively-multiplayer online game in which players will build, live in and inevitably die in player created galactic constructions.
With fully simulated environments, a massive persistent galaxy and even functioning human organs, the Federation welcomes you to work for your survival on the edge of man-made space.
Ion was developed in partnership with Improbable, a London-based company which develops the SpatialOS game engine. However, it seems that relationship between both companies fell apart at some point, as Hall explained to Eurogamer than he’d like RocketWerkz to fully control its game projects going forward:
“The whole idea of setting up RocketWerkz was to try a lot of different stuff,” he said. “Part of what we were doing with RocketWerkz in the early days was experimenting around and saying well how do we want to make games? Do we want to focus on partnering, do we want to look for other people to do technology? And the decision we’ve made is to very much focus on the projects we control in their entirety ourselves.”
While it’s sad to learn that the game will never see the light of day, Hall added that “I’d far rather people were pissed off I didn’t release something than I release something I wasn’t happy with and try to take money from them. That’s the most important thing.” With Ion being put on the sidelines, RocketWerkz has been busy working on new games recently: on April 1st, Hall will unveil a brand new title at the EGX Rezzed game show in London.
