Yesterday FASA announced that they’ve officially closed the doors. But some weird stuff also started happening to Shadowrun yesterday.
Gamers in Shadowrun were seen as playing “Shadowrun EPD Service” on their gamercards. Their gamer status was no longer displaying the maps in which they were playing. “EPD Service” was now appearing in their profiles. You can surf Google and find remnants of the EPD Service.
Additionally, there are reports that cross-platform play (Shadowrun is the only Games for Windows title to do this) is not working. A response from a FASA dev says:
We are aware of this problem and are looking into the cause.
FASA also states that these errors are not related to FASA closing:
The game runs on the the Xbox Live / Games for Windows Live service. These services aren’t reliant on anything FASA does day to day. Once we give them a build / update, it simply runs on the service. The last update we posted was TU3, which was a while back.
Fall (who is a member of the Shadowrun team, btw) is looking into why this is happening, but it’s not related to the FASA closure.
It’s certainly odd that now of all times these errors are happening. Is FASA throwing out a hint? Is EPD Service the “something big” that is supposed to come to Shadowrun? Is “EPD Service” the name of a newly formed game studio? Did a disgruntled employee cause cross-platform play to end?
Oh the drama. Hey. Where’s the rest of our gamerpics?
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In a forum post on the official Shadowrun forums we get this:
Dear Friends,
It is my sad duty to announce that FASA Studio has officially closed its doors. Today was the official last day of employment for those of us who had not moved on to other positions within Microsoft Game Studios. While the rumors have been circulating forever, we chose to wait on an official announcement because we didn’t want people’s attention distracted from our last product, Shadowrun, a game we love.
As a testament to the team’s commitment to Shadowrun, we released three title updates to improve the product even after the team learned we were losing our studio. We have kept our Community Manager and Technical Support Manager on the job to aid and support you and will continue to do so while people continue to play our game. I am pleased that about half of us have found great positions elsewhere in MGS and Microsoft where they can share their experience and passion with the great people there.
But now, as the last of us say our goodbyes to each other, I’m saying goodbye to you on behalf of a group of talented and dedicated professionals who busted their humps for the love of the game. I am proud to have worked with and represented them to you and know that wherever they go, they will continue to kick ass.
I can say that being a part of the public beta test team was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had from home. That was FASA to me because that was all I knew. The FASA devs interacted with the community daily, sometimes hourly. They have no problem admitting that the beta testers directly impacted the development of Shadowrun. We have no problem admitting that we are sad to see FASA dissolved.
Best of luck to the devs.
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