With the MMORPG project Ghost, former WoW developer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street aimed to captivate where he believes other online role-playing games have failed. Now, the veteran has addressed the community with a grim message.
What does Greg Street announce? After the Chinese company NetEase withdrew as a financial backer, the Project Ghost team failed to secure an alternative financing source. On linkedin.com, Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street now explains:
Fantastic Pixel Castle will close its doors on November 17. While there still exists the possibility of securing funding after this date, this depends on how many employees remain with the team. We would like to complete our game, but our top priority is to help our developers find new employment, whether at the indie studio Fantastic Pixel Castle 2.0 or one of the many other good (and hopefully stable) game and technology companies.
What the “indie studio Fantastic Pixel Castle 2.0” is precisely about is currently unclear. However, it seems that Greg Street wants to make another attempt with a new, smaller studio. Whether he will venture into an MMORPG again is questionable after recent experiences.
There was already a playable prototype for the MMORPG Ghost:
Difficult Times for the MMORPG Genre
What experiences were those? For a long time, everything looked good at Fantastic Pixel Castle and the MMORPG project Ghost. Funding seemed secured for years, development was progressing well, and the team was working with “high morale” and “without any drama” on the game (at least that’s what Greg Street reported some time ago on linkedin.com).
The Chinese backer has been pursuing a strict austerity course since February 2025, which particularly affected various Western investments. In August 2025, there were initial hints that Project Ghost might also be affected by the austerity measures. In October 2025, the certainty followed: The team from Fantastic Pixel Castle urgently needs new investors.
Despite the strong foundation, the experienced team, and numerous discussions, Greg Street has failed to find a financially strong partner to finish developing the MMORPG.
MMORPGs in Trouble: The new Warhammer MMO was also financed by NetEase, known for its veteran Jack Emmert (Neverwinter Online, Star Trek Online, City of Heroes). There were already rumors in February 2025 that they were looking for new backers.
It is clear that there were layoffs a few months ago – affected was, among others, Senior Gameplay Designer Jacob Beauseigneur (source: linkedin.com). Whether the Warhammer project is doing better than Ghost remains unclear.
But it’s not just the potential MMORPGs of the future that are struggling. Fans of New World have recently learned that Aeternum may not be reachable after 2027.
There will be no new content updates, Amazon Games clarified last week. And there’s also a big question mark over the new MMORPG based on The Lord of the Rings. You can read more about all this here: Amazon wanted to be a big player in games – The end of New World completes a sad story of failure
