Wargaming has announced the acquisition of Fractured Space developer Edge Case Games. The team will be joining Wargaming UK to work on the studio’s unannounced MMO project. They bring with them plenty of online and free-to-play experience from developing and maintaining their novel spaceship MOBA, and it’s experience that Wargaming is keen to have.
“Wargaming and Edge Case Games have been looking for a way to partner for years,” UK product director Sean Decker told GamesIndustry.biz. “They have a great background that fits with Wargaming’s future plans in new games—they have built and run free-to-play, vehicle-based MMOs, built on the Unreal tech stack.”
The MMO, which will be free-to-play, is otherwise a mystery, though I don’t think anyone would be surprised if it prominently featured large vehicles blowing up other large vehicles. Decker told MCVUK that Wargaming UK is also looking to explore co-op and PvE gameplay, not just PvP.
Edge Case Games ran Fractured Space for a couple of years after launching it in 2016, but the MOBA never quite attracted the population that would have been required to support it in the long-term. The developer announced that Fractured Space’s Infection update would be its last, back in October, but that the servers would be kept online for the foreseeable future. There’s no mention of Fractured Space’s fate in the announcement, but my guess is it won’t be around for much longer.
Despite the enduring popularity of MOBAs, only a lucky few seem to even get out of beta, so Fractured Space is one of the more fortunate. It’s still a shame that it never became more popular, however, because it was extremely good. Imagine a Battlestar Galactica version of World of Tanks and you’re getting close. Check out Chris Thursten’s Fractured Space review and mourn its impending demise.