The science fiction survival game Fragmented has had a bumpy development, which has now resulted in it being essentially dead. The developers refer to a “maintenance mode.”
Fragmented was born out of necessity. The developer studio Above and Beyond initially worked on the interesting sandbox MMO The Repopulation, which was inspired by the classics Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.
Many players showed great interest in The Repopulation until problems arose between the developer studio and the engine developer, Idea Fabrik. These ultimately led the original developers to abandon the project, and the engine developers took over. A strange situation.
What happened with Fragmented?
Let’s summarize the issues once again:
- Financial difficulties at engine developer Idea Fabrik forced Above and Beyond to shut down the servers for the alpha of The Repopulation at the end of 2015
- Idea Fabrik claimed that Above and Beyond stopped payments for the license of the Hero Engine, which had initially led to the financial problems
- Above and Beyond announced their intention to switch to the Unreal Engine
- The switch of the engine was to be financed by the development of a new survival game called Fragmented
- Above and Beyond wanted to focus on Fragmented and sold the rights and assets of the MMORPG The Repopulation to Idea Fabrik
- After the early access launch in spring 2016, patches for Fragmented were regularly released
- The official release of the survival game occurred in August 2017
- The game did not receive a good reception, and the ratings on Steam continued to decline
- According to Steamcharts, an average of 10 players are online at the same time
Fragmented is dead
The developers now state that they have not given up on Fragmented yet, but it is in maintenance mode now. This means that aside from bug fixes, no further work is currently being done on the game.
Fragmented simply does not generate enough revenue to create more content.
A large part of the team has already turned to other projects. Fans should not hold out hopes of seeing major updates for the survival game in the near future.
Thus, Fragmented is essentially dead. Hardly anyone plays it, the ratings are poor, and there is no new content. The team has not discussed which projects Above and Beyond is currently developing.
