Meridian 59 Developer Closes Its Doors

Near Death Studios, who purchased Meridian 59 in 2001 and has maintained it ever since, announced last week that the studio is closing its doors. Meridian 59 was originally created by Archetype Interactive and turned into a commercial venture by The 3DO Company; it was one of the first 3D MMOGs, but The 3DO Company shut it down in 2000, only to have rights purchased by Near Death Studios in 2001, a company founded by members of the original team.

Near Death Studios, including the illustrious Brian "Psychochild" Green, tried to no avail to upgrade the game from its extremely dated Doom-like graphics into a modern engine and attract new players. Though the game has always had a core following, it's failed to generate much attention past that core group and as a commercial effort, it's flopped.

Brian Green announced on his blog on the 31st that Near Death Studios was closing down:

Unfortunately, M59 never really grew. We were lucky that we got a lot of attention for keeping an old game alive from the press. We also had a small and dedicated group of fans willing to keep the game alive. But, the press didn't really care about our attempts to improve the game, and the fans weren't interested in trying to attract new players. So, we were in a purgatory where we had enough money to keep moving forward, even spend some on things like advertising, but not enough to really grow like we needed.

The death knell was probably when we tried to do a massive upgrade to the client, getting an actual 3D hardware accelerated renderer instead of the DOOM-era software renderer. We finished this project a few months before WoW launched, and any fanfare we tried to generate was drowned in the flood of WoW excitement. On top of that, WoW cannibalized our subscribers (like it did for many other games), so we had even less income to deal with.

He goes on to explain that the game won't be shutting down, but as a commercial concern with Near Death Studios owning it, its time is over. Whether this means someone else will be taking over or it will just go into unsupported limbo isn't explained.

It's always a shame when iconic companies shut down, but the silver lining is that Meridian 59 won't be going with it.

Meridian 59 Developer Near Death Studios Closes [Gamasutra]