The action MMO “Guardians of Ember” was removed from Steam because the developers had posted reviews for one of their games themselves. Now it is coming back under a new publisher. A new closed beta has started.
What happened with Guardians of Ember? In February 2018, Valve announced that all games from “Insel Games” would be removed from the Steam platform. This included “Guardians of Ember.” Valve terminated all business relationships with Insel Games.
The background was an incident that erupted on reddit. It was revealed that the developers had attempted to boost their own game “Wild Buster: Heroes of Titan” with good reviews.
An email was leaked in which employees were instructed by a superior to write positive reviews for Wild Buster. The letter could also be interpreted as a threat: Those who do not write a review jeopardize their job.
Anyone who does not write a review must explain this to the boss in a personal conversation.
The boss later apologized for the email and said it was a misunderstanding and that no employees were threatened, but that didn’t help anymore.
The incident ultimately led to all games from Insel Games being removed. They could still be played but could no longer be purchased.
That’s why Guardians of Ember is back: The German company GameForge announced in August 2018 that they had acquired the publishing rights to “Guardians of Ember.” They wanted to bring the game back.
The closed beta has now started:
- Anyone who played the game earlier will automatically receive an update and can start slashing again
- Anyone who wants to join can sign up on the website.
At the moment, the game is still running outside of Steam through its own client. On Steam itself, there are only community messages.
What is Guardians of Ember? This is a hack and slash with MMO elements. We tested Guardians of Ember in early access back then.
Guardians of Ember probably cannot be granted too much chance of success. Already in the first attempt in 2016, the game could not exactly make a splash on Steam. According to Steamcharts, Guardians of Ember had a peak of a maximum of 1150 players online simultaneously (December 2016). In the years following, it was mostly between 100 and 200.
But maybe with GameForge, a boost is coming now.
Otherwise, you might find an alternative here:
