The online strategy game will only receive patches and updates

Jan 4, 2013 13:51 GMT  ·  By

Gas Powered Games, the developer of Age of Empires Online, the popular online strategy title, has confirmed that it's now moving the game into the support phase, meaning it won't release any new content for it, as it's only going to focus on solving bugs and keeping it running for as long as it is financially possible.

Age of Empires Online was supposed to bring the famous strategy franchise back into the mainstream of the genre and, while it did attract quite a few users, it wasn't a great success.

Now, after releasing a special update with a Norse civilization last year, Gas Powered Games has confirmed that it won't be bringing any new content to Age of Empires Online, as it will only limit itself to offering support for users and eliminate glitches.

"Creating top-tier content, as we have been for the last year and a half, is very expensive—too expensive to maintain for long, as it turns out," the developer wrote on the AOEO blog.

"We can no longer afford to keep creating it. AOEO already has a very large amount of high-quality, hand-crafted entertainment, and adding more is no longer cost-effective."

"There is a small amount of content still in the pipeline that will be released in the next few weeks, but that is all. No new features will be added. Most significantly, no new civilizations will be released; the six existing ones are the complete and final set."

According to Gas Powered Games, the game will remain the same and continues to be fully functional, despite the fact that it won't receive any new content or civilizations.

"However, nothing else changes for players, nothing that currently exists will be removed. You can still play everything you own, earn EP, and purchase any content you do not currently own. We will still fully maintain and support the game and its players; no one is losing anything that you have earned or bought. Our Community team will continue to support the game by way of Community Challenges, streams, contests, PvP tournaments and more."

Bugs and glitches will continue to be solved, according to the studio, but some may prove to be too costly to fix, so GPG will only work on patching critical exploits.

Are you sad to hear that Age of Empires Online will no longer be updated or have you moved past the strategy experience?