Developer Tiny Speck yesterday announced that it would be shutting down Glitch, its offbeat free-to-play MMO. The game will continue to run until December 9, when it'll officially be closed down at 8 PM Pacific time. The website and forums will continue to run until the end of the year so players can communicate with each other, download any tracks they dug, and so on.
What really separated Glitch from the standard crop of free-to-play MMOs was its laid-back design and quirky nature. The game was an absolute joy to play, and it was about as cathartic an experience as Animal Crossing and Katamari Damacy combined. Hell, Glitch was the only MMO I ever actually cared enough about to play (I even reviewed it)!
After the game moved on from its beta stages to its full release, Tiny Speck went back to the drawing board and "unlaunched" it last year, reverting back to beta and tweaking it up once more. Sadly, these fixes and updates couldn't hold Glitch together for very long and ultimately the lack of a substantially strong audience led to the game's closure after just three years.
It really is a bummer that such a wonderful little project didn't catch on. We see so many useless MMOs and crappy Facebook titles get a massive following, so when something as great as Glitch ends up failing, it's definitely is a sad deal.
Here's to Glitch and Tiny Speck. No doubt fans will be looking forward to the studio's next project.
[Glitch]
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