Perpetual Looking To Transfer Development of Star Trek Online

For the last few months there have been mounting troubles at Perpetual Entertainment, the company making the “Star Trek Online” MMORPG, and now it appears that it has finally come to a head. TrekMovie.com has learned from a source that after failing to secure additional financing the company has stopped development on the game. However, all hope is not lost.

STO moving to a new studio
According to our source talks are currently underway to transfer the game assets as well as the Star Trek license to a new developer. WarCry is also reporting on this story and their sources state that Perpetual are not looking to sell the coding for the game. The WarCry report also states that the transfer has already taken place ‘to another Bay Area development studio,’ but according to our source no deal is currently in place.

TrekMovie.com has confirmed that Cryptic Studios, the company behind the award-winning MMORPGs “City of Heroes” and “City of Villains” is currently interviewing members of the Perpetual team. However, Cryptic would not confirm if they are involved with discussions to pick up the game assets or Star Trek license as well. Cryptic is currently working on another licensed MMORPG, “Marvel Universe Online” as well as other games and may just be looking to pick up some newly available talent.

The last release estimate for Star Trek Online was for the summer of 2009, but any change of developers is likely to disrupt that target. However, it is welcome news that the game will likely survive. Many Trek fans can remember the high-profile game “Secret of Vulcan Fury” which died late into its development in 1999 when the developer (Interplay) ran into financial trouble.

TrekMovie.com will continue to report on this story as it develops.

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I would like to see this game come out good, I hope it does not get delayed again..

Ouch. This could be very bad news, but most of all, this sucks for the development team. I’d hate to have invested so much time and effort into the project to not see it through to the end.

I’m looking forward to this game… Sad news. I have hope, but little expectation.

The development of this project has been a long and lengthy process only to arrive at this point… By the time they get this game out in the projected “summer of 09” I’m betting a vast degree of the gameplay and some of its major components will be put to shame by other MMORPG’s released during this time.

Games that are typically in development for this much time and which undergo hard times such as this dont usually walk out being top prized projects.

I just hope Cryptic Studio’s picks this project up, they have both the financing and previous experience to get this show on the road and see it finished to the end.

So far I haven’t been overly impressed with what’s been done – this just reinforces the doubt that I have in the future of this games success.

I have 2 PCs and a Mac and none that are that old. I can’t even download most of these online games so I was dubious I’d ever get to play anyway.

However I am crazy enough of a fanboy to have been considering not buying a new ‘puter until this came out. I am not good at these games but mostly because they are not Star Trek! I would love to play in a full ST universe and mingle with the fans instead of just geeky kids who like to kill things and grab points.

Just release Vulcan Fury and I’ll be happy.

Goodbye Perpetual…cant say im gonna miss ya

I swear to God I may not come back to this site if that Dragon Wars popup ad continues being featured on this website. It is the most annoying ad I have ever seen on a news site or blog.

They’ll probably make it more in line with STXI. “I know engineers. They love to change things.” We’ll see STXI console games long before this baby comes out.

Please, BioWare, pick this mutha up!

Well, they gave it a try and I bet they had a lot of fun working on it. Making Star Trek MMO is probably one of the most difficult things to do at this point in time. #1, Trek fans are demanding customers and #2, Blizzard and co. are dominating the market and apparently have astronomical budgets.

The people that made CoH/CoV certainly know how to make entertaining games. But I’m used to the ‘done when it’s done’ philosophy of Blizzard now, so I’ll be patient. I just so hope they won’t release half a game when their deadlines comes up.

If such a game ever materializes, I’d be in awe of a good design. The choices made in Trek are so frequently moral choices and sometimes tricky ones; that’d be quite a challenge to implement in a way that would work in an MMORPG (I’ve got a few ideas how it could be done, myself, but they’re half-baked ones and I’d love to see some fully-formed from the oven, as it were) …

#8, et al…

I use firefox 2.0.0.11 and AdBlock Plus. Never seen a pop up of any kind here.

IDIC,

Vince

It might actually be GOOD. After an unevitable success of “Star Trek” (2008), we might actually get a game that is set in the world of REAL Star Trek, i.e. 23rd century. Because back then, men were strong, women were beautiful, ships were sleek, aliens were green and space was much more fun. Stay away from 25th century & bring the retro-cool in! :-)

For whatever reason, I predict this game suffering the same fate as Stargate SG-1 The Alliance a few years ago. Too bad, too, because just like the SG First Person Shooter, this seemed like a really fun game.

Why would STO move to Cryptic? Cryptic’s most high profile MMO, Marvel Universe is rumored to be in trouble itself, Cryptic also recently lost a good deal of the City of Villains/Heroes staff to former publishing partner, NCSoft. It seems unlikely.

Still, anything’s possible!

Unless a white knight studio are taking the entire studio and all the programmers and assets as a working entity, they’ve no chance of making it work. It’s hard enough to work out the code of the guy sitting next to you. When the code hasn’t even come out of the same standards briefing you are pretty much lost. Even in game assets will be pretty much bespoke.

I really can’t see it happening now but I can’t say I’m really too sad as I spend enough time in virtual worlds as it is. A Trek MMO would be the final nail in the coffin of RL for me….

I remember having an ad for First Contact in my hand… it came with the Generations PC game and was also stopped shortly afterwards :(

Why not make Elite Force III, with the newer FPS engines… imagine a borg level with D3/Q4/HL2 technology… *goosebumps*

… far too big in vision.

They should just concentrate on creating a great game. That hasn’t happened in trek gaming yet.

Ridiculous, we’ll be lucky to get this game by Trek XII. First it was late ’08 then pushed to the summer ’09, now who knows. Vulcan Fury was looking incredibly awesome, didn’t make it…First Contact was looking really good, didn’t make it, if ST:Online is looking good, don’t count on it coming through. Another sad Trek gaming disappointment coming. I’d love to be optimistic….
# 18, EF III would be a promising game, EF 1 circulated around Voyager, EF 2 circulated around Enterprise-E, I could see a promising EF 3 with maybe USS Titan (Riker and Troi) or some tie in with DS9 or a new crew, any way the same concept of Elite Force is probably much improved since 2003

#8 Pop up Blockers work really well. You might find them helpful.

Whenever I read story like this, I must ask, who’s been paying to keep Duke Nukem Forever development going for almost 11 years?

I’m a doctor not a good videogame, Jim!

I almost think STAR TREK is a property that can’t seem to find success in the video game market. It seems so strange because it is such property that seem natural. Ironically the only STAR TREK game I have played all the way through was the ST VOYAGER Elite Team 1st person shooter. Even though I was not big on that TREK series by any means the game itself was quite fun and even had some bit of Mirror TOS stuff in one part of it. Also having worked in the game business I had many a game at times 85 to almost 90% finished and they would be cancelled. It is a really rough and tough business!

Looking like this game will never be released.

Stick in a fork in it.

It’s dead Jim.

What a failure.. first they kept cutting down the scope of the game, cutting out the aspects that would give it depth. Then even further with a “stylized” approach as well as making it sound more and more like World of Warcraft with phasers. Everyone gets to have their own starship (epic mount). Lol.

In some sense I’m not so disappointed. The MMO genre doesn’t need another clone and from what I was hearing this was shaping up to be just that. I’d rather see something new and inspiring and fun – not a useless time waster. Hopefully another company will pick this up and reinvent it, maybe at least leverage some of the graphical work done. As long as its not blizzard..

Ironic the company is called “Perpetual”. Perhaps they should rename themselves “Discontinuous”

To make a game based on a license is always difficult. I just wonder if the foundations made by Perpetual will be attractive to a developer or publisher. The whole MMORPG genre is so difficult to pin down. While a large amount of press has been dedicated to it, the genre itself has yet to break into the mainstream.

As a note, I have never played a MMORPG, but Star Trek Online was something that I would have paid great attention to. The biggest difficulty I have with these games is the obession with paid for content. Why does it always seem that the games i’m interested in require a credit card and a monthly subsripticon.

From the material already posted online, I’m pretty hopeful this game might be pretty fun to play.

This is avery sad day . I knew if ll the rumors were true then this game was dead. First StarWars Galaxies went to crap, and now this. Im not happy at all. Galaxies went to try the casual gamer and we saw what happend to it.

I think its that MMOs cater to a very strange community of escapists as such it is hard to conceive of what a casual-friendly game would be like without making it juvenile. Its a big challenge of the genre and the big hurdle before these things could ever be mainstream. Better AI, higher capacity servers, more evolved socio-political systems will attract normal adults who find the gangland geek design distasteful. Perhaps a Star Trek themed game is too “intelligent” for what can be currently built…

This news just re-enforces my growing doubt that was seeded months ago.

Damn it, Jim!

Why is it that it seems to be the ground breaking games that always get cancelled?

First Secret of Vulcan Fury, now this. Are these games odd numbered or something? :)
I’m glad I am a realist instead of an optimist, otherwise I would be feeling depressed all the time….

It’s quite amazing that with the diversity which the Star Trek universe has to offer, space combat, exploration, puzzle solving, first person combat and so on, why there cannot be a first rate game made and released. Something which is a fusion of Bridge Commander and Elite Force, with sprinkles of Judgement Rites and A Final Unity

BTW
I am currently playing Elie Force II on my laptop after picking up a second hand copy from Amazon. Had forgotten how much fun this was.

I really wish we could preview/amend our entries before they are submitted. How about it Anthony?

This is the only site I regularly make spelling mistakes on… Sheesh! And before anyone else says it, yes I do read my posts before submitting.

i know Cryptic Studios are working on that marvel mmorpg ( which as someone said might be in trouble), so dont know if they would have time to do star trek as well . hmm here hopeing .

well umm as student studying game design an development in college , i will throw my hat in , give me the code and asseets and i will make a star trek game like the world has never seen ! (please note game might actually just a 3d dancing kirk ) ……………….anyway , here is hoping star trek online is saved .

Oh boy, if ONLY the powers-that-be would release that ‘LEGO Star Trek’ game to the masses…

The United Federation Starfleet Sim in Second Life has the best fully immersable Star Trek experience in the Galaxy!

Check it out!

I have no idea what this really means— a virtual Star Trek world?
My goodness.. my character would probably have a phaser accident and be re-named Lefty RedShirt.

How many “Khans” would there be?

Heya! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any issues with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing several weeks of hard work due to no data backup. Do you have any methods to stop hackers?

Hey there just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The words in your content seem to be running off the screen in Opera. I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know. The design and style look great though! Hope you get the issue fixed soon. Cheers