Developer Mechanist Games has purchased the publishing rights to the English version of its game City of Steam from publisher Reality Squared Games, allowing the studio to self-publish this version of the title in all territories, the company announced today.
This will affect only English language versions of City of Steam, which was renamed and will relaunch as City of Steam: Arcadia later next month, the company noted in a press statement. Other language versions will remain unaffected, and the studio noted that it sought the publishing rights in hopes of regaining players and halting the title's dwindling audience.
"[The purchase] is not because of game license contract non-renewal (as speculated by some)," the developer said in a statement. "Many factors contributed to our decision to purchase back the publishing rights. In their recent statement, R2 Games made it clear they had a 'chronic lack of players' and this was a major factor in our decision."
Mechanist will be opening its own servers for City of Steam, as R2's servers will now shut down. The studio noted it will be providing "compensation" on the new servers to long-standing players, allowing them to transfer their account information over from R2's servers.
"We have a strong desire to give everyone the fresh new start this game deserves, but we also really want to thank the loyal players who stuck with City of Steam and welcome them home," the studio wrote. "That is why their accounts will be compensated on the new servers. Please understand how starting fresh and honoring loyalty conflict with each other — it is a very tricky situation for us, a sensitive topic, so we can't release any more information until we are absolutely sure on the details of the compensation."
City of Steam's servers are set to shut down in preparation for the change on Nov. 21 at 2:59 a.m. ET.