Spider Tanks was the first game launched supported by GalaChain, and it’s always held a special place in our hearts. As one of our original collaborations with an external studio, many of our long-term community members and employees love Spider Tanks.
We wish to respond to community comments about development on the game, which has stalled in the last half year. We agree with you: this has gone too far.
The community deserves official word about Spider Tanks, so we’d like to share information about the current situation and what we hope to do about it.
Spider Tanks Today
Spider Tanks has always been a game that inspired fun development and progress. The addition of custom Pilot contracts, missions and other features increased the engagement of the game. We were very excited to see where the arena was going next.
The developer that we hired, GAMEDIA, however, slowed development of the game, then stopped altogether. Over months, the game received less and less GAMEDIA support. Eventually only one GAMEDIA employee was supporting the game at all… then no one.
GAMEDIA entered a long-term contract with Gala Games to support the game, and it is our belief that they have failed to do this. We have tried to find a friendly resolution to this, whether it be allowing us to bring in another developer, work out a new arrangement or allow us to access source code and develop the game internally. GAMEDIA has been unreceptive from our perspective.
At the same time, GAMEDIA has openly discussed waiting out the licensing period on the contract with inaction and then releasing on other platforms. It has also said that it won’t respect the entire licensing period. Basically, GAMEDIA wants to abandon its partnership with GALA and to be the only company to control the game. GAMEDIA’s promises weren’t only made to us, they were also promises for you, the community.
The Future
Because of our commitment to the community, we are currently actively pursuing legal mechanisms to enforce the contract terms upon GAMEDIA.
Our goal is simple: to continue the development of Spider Tanks and meet the community’s needs. We were reluctant to do anything to show GAMEDIA in a negative light originally, because they helped make a great game, and we still believe they are talented developers. However, we also believe they are significantly out of alignment with our expectations for the support of the game.
We were informed that development stopped nearly 6 months ago on Spider Tanks. There are still hundreds or thousands of people playing every day. That is a testament to how awesome this game is, and we don’t want it to die.
We hope to see you in the arena soon! You can find a link to our legal action here.