GamesWildStar & Carbine Studios Both Shutting Down

WildStar & Carbine Studios Both Shutting Down

Carbine Studios, developer of the MMO WildStar, has announced that the studio is officially shutting down. The unfortunate news means that upwards of 50 people will lose their jobs due to the closure. On top of that, WildStar will soon be shutting off its servers and ceasing development entirely.

NCSoft is the Korean parent company and publisher that owns Carbine Studios. Staff were informed that Carbine was shuttering yesterday afternoon. NCSoft hopes to shift as many affected employees as possible to other roles. NCSoft has stated that players who have purchased things in WildStar between July 1st and the game’s shut down will be refunded. The official date for servers to go down has been announced as November 28, 2018. Here’s the official statement that the publisher provided to Kotaku:

“Today, we are closing Carbine Studios and will begin the process of winding WildStar down to ultimately shutter the game. WildStar players who have spent money within the game will be refunded purchases from July 1, 2018 until the payment system is shut off. We are also in the process of identifying the teams that will be doing the work to bring WildStar to a close. These decisions are very difficult to make and we are in the midst of shifting as many of our teammates as possible into other roles within the organization.”

Carbine Studios was founded in 2005 by a group of ex-Blizzard employees who helped to develop World of Warcraft into the behemoth it is today. The studio was purchased by NCSoft in 2007, and then the duo announced WildStar in 2011 and saw it finally release in 2014.

WildStar was never as successful as the developer and publisher had hoped, despite it making it onto our list of the best MMOs of all-time. Launching with a subscription model, it didn’t take long to realize that making it free-to-play was the only possible way for it to succeed. It had a hardcore group of fans, but never achieved the mainstream status that Carbine strived for. Well, wishes go out to everyone affected by the studio’s closure.

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Jeff Scott
Growing up a 90's kid, Jeff found his love for gaming during Nintendo's heyday. Because of that, you could (perhaps sadly) call him a "Nintendo Fanboy" to this day.

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