After the sign of life in May 2025, studio head Mark Jacobs has now once again sat in front of the camera to talk about the current state of Camelot Unchained and show new gameplay.
What does Mark Jacobs say? On Twitch, the industry veteran (lead designer of Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online) explained how the MMORPG Camelot Unchained and his studio Unchained Entertainment are doing. As a reminder: At the beginning of 2025, Jacobs had to lay off part of his team. The new insights:
- It is currently a very difficult situation in the industry when it comes to raising funds for game development. After many discussions and appointments, they managed to secure the foreseeable future of the studio.
- At the end of summer, players should finally have the opportunity to play Camelot Unchained. From then on, there should also be regular developer updates about the game.
- Since the last update in May, the (still quite small) team has made great progress, and Camelot Unchained is said to be on a good path.
As with last time, there was again gameplay to see that went live concurrently with the stream on the official YouTube channel of Unchained Entertainment. You can watch the almost 30 minutes below:
Gameplay that (again) deters
What does the video show? Scenes from a playtest on July 8, 2025, from the perspective of an archer and his 6-player group. Among other things, the following can be seen and heard:
- Battles against PvE and PvP opponents with a tab-targeting system for resource points and a fortress
- Various biomes such as a mushroom forest, a beach, and a barren landscape with huge skeleton heads
- A full ability bar (the tester obviously does not know the class very well yet and has to check skill descriptions and click abilities with the mouse repeatedly)
- Loud keyboard clattering – the gameplay was obviously put live unedited
- A rather outdated graphics and a simple placeholder interface (the health bar of a group member is directly above the chat)
How does the community react to the gameplay? After the experiences from last time, the developers have directly disabled the comment function under the video this time. However, a discussion on Reddit shows what the genre fans think of the footage:
- forstyy explains on Reddit: “Loud keyboard noises, abilities clicked with the mouse, going backwards, comments disabled, dislikes disabled. The video hits every sore spot.”
- goaskcivil finds on Reddit: “This looks like it’s from 2012.” Fun fact: The Kickstarter campaign for Camelot Unchained was in 2013.
- sheetskees tries to find something positive from the footage on Reddit: “Sometimes I think about getting older and feel like I haven’t accomplished much in my life. Then I think about the person who has been working on developing Camelot Unchained for over 13 years, and I feel better.”
Noteworthy: Several players are drawing comparisons to another MMORPG in which PvP battles in the world will play a significant role and which has recently also been criticized by many players (for various postponements of the next alpha phase):
- TheGladex writes on Reddit: “The one positive thing you can say about Ashes of Creation is that at least it’s not Camelot Unchained.”
- SkylineCrash finds on Reddit also: “This looks like Ashes of Creation, but worse.”
- steele83 adds on Reddit: “Believe it or not, back then there was a fierce debate in my guild over whether we should support Ashes of Creation or Camelot Unchained. AoC is not perfect, but it clearly won that argument.”
What do I need to know about Camelot Unchained? Actually, the MMORPG should have been out a long time ago. However, the team of industry veteran Mark Jacobs kept getting sidetracked, struggled with financial issues, or got distracted by other projects like the PvE MMO Final Stand: Ragnarök.
After a long development period and many delays, there was suddenly a surprising status update from the lead developer in March 2024: Camelot Unchained is set to finally release in late 2025. At the beginning of the year, the news about the layoffs followed.
Since the Kickstarter boom in the 2010s, there have been a number of developers who wanted to finance their MMO through crowdfunding. But which games have actually been released? Here’s the answer: 24 Kickstarter MMOs that asked you for money – A financial statement after 13 years with a frustrating balance
