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Signal Studios' Ascend: Hand of Kul shutdown by Microsoft on Xbox 360

Corpekata

Banned
Signal Studios, the guys mainly know for the Toy Soldiers game have a moderately popular free to play game on Xbox 360, one of the first on the system I believe. Anyways, it appears that Microsoft has pulled the plug, and Signal Studios was not really aware it was going to do so.

Signal Studios must regretfully announce that despite our best efforts and the games success, Microsoft has discontinued support for Ascend: Hand of Kul on the Xbox 360 and removed the game from the Xbox Live Marketplace. This surfaced to us while investigating various issues players have been experiencing over the weekend.

More at the link: http://www.signalstudios.net/news/entry/ascend-hand-of-kul-gets-discontinued-on-xbox-360

Game recently appeared on Steam and appears unaffected by this. Seems rather strange that MS just silently did this if it's true.
 

nullpoynter

Member
Wow, that's pretty harsh of Microsoft. They could have at least notified the studio instead of having the studio discover it only after users started having issues. Pretty damn cold Microsoft...
 
You would think there'd be an automated notification sent out by MS's systems to let developers know their game is being taken down
 
That's rather sudden. I enjoyed what I played of it, didn't really get sucked in to keep playing for more than a week or two but still they should have gotten some sort of notification.
 

Straxus

Member
OOooohhhh.... That's why I was disconnected after completing my first ascension maybe an hour ago. That blows.

Edit: I'm able to log in again.
 

Moipa

Neo Member
I didn't really like the game, but damn that is a bad thing to do for a free to play game on your platform. The game wasn't out that long. Imagine that you spent money on that, thats not a good way to build trust with your consumers.
 

KnuckaWut

Member
WAKE+UP+AMERICA+_93e191e5dc08c37457092b750c69d0c9.gif
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
MS has been pretty aggressively delisting older PC software and F2P stuff. I think there's been a contraction at Microsoft Studios and they don't have the producing bandwidth to continue managing old brands. Besides this game, the following have been shut down or pulled in the last year:

Windows Phone:
Rocket Riot
Carcassonne
The Harvest
Galactic Reign
Chickens Can't Fly (MS points in-app purchase issue; dev not permitted to update to remove MS points)
Beards and Beaks (MS points in-app purchase issue; dev not permitted to update to remove MS points)
Tentacles (MS points in-app purchase issue; dev not permitted to update to remove MS points)

Windows 8:
Zombies!!!
The Harvest
Crash Course Go (Licensed)
The Gunstringer: Dead Man Running
Team Crossword
Royal Envoy 2
Rocket Riot
Gunpowder
Disney The Little Mermaid (Licensed)
Galactic Reign (Dedicated servers)

Steam:
The Harvest
Age of Empires Online (Online-only, F2P)
Microsoft Flight (F2P)
Fable III (GFWL)

Xbox 360:
Crash Course 2 (Licensed)
Ascend: Hand of Kul
Intel Discovered (Licensed)
Catan

In cases where the developers were external to MS, virtually all have commented that they are unhappy with the delistings and would prefer to continue running the game; it's unclear why games wholly owned by MS were delisted. It's impossible not to look at the volume of stuff here and not see that they're contracting their first-party publishing holdings.
 

Haunted

Member
MS has been pretty aggressively delisting older PC software and F2P stuff. I think there's been a contraction at Microsoft Studios and they don't have the producing bandwidth to continue managing old brands. Besides this game, the following have been shut down or pulled in the last year:

Age of Empires Online
:(
 
MS has been pretty aggressively delisting older PC software and F2P stuff. I think there's been a contraction at Microsoft Studios and they don't have the producing bandwidth to continue managing old brands.

Wouldn't external games be supported by the third parties in question? I don't understand what it cost MS to continue allowing Ascend be up on the marketplace. Probably overlooking something I would imagine
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Wouldn't external games be supported by the third parties in question? I don't understand what it cost MS to continue allowing Ascend be up on the marketplace. Probably overlooking something I would imagine

MS operates Ascend's servers, MS as the publisher would handle customer support (even if handling means paying the developer to handle it), MS as publisher needs to certify patches, etc.
 
Ah ok that makes sense then. I guess it might be indicative of some MS support being downsized or re-purposed etc. as it does seem a somewhat concentrated effort
 
I've just stumbled across this news. I played quite a lot of Ascend when I had my 360 and thought it was a pretty good game. I was under the impression that it was doing quite well so to remove it without even telling the studio is pretty shitty.
 
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