14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Stargate Worlds, the MMO which is supposed to use the intellectual property of the television show that ran for an impressive number of seasons, has been hit by financial troubles. Employees have not been paid for almost one month and a site has even been put up to track how long they will go without receiving their wages.
Kevin Balentine from Cheyenne Mountain told Gamasutra that “At Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, we have always been upfront with the media and our fans that we are a start-up. Like many start ups, we face the same cash-flow issues that all pre-revenue companies face”.
Still, the company seemed to be doing very well earlier in the year. As far back as March, Joel Ybarra stated that there were four teams of developers working on the Stargate Worlds MMO and another videogame title, which the company was not ready to talk about. In April, Cheyenne Mountain even spun off its own publisher, called FireSky, that was set to deliver Stargate and other company projects.
As the economic crisis and the credit crunch take their toll on Cheyenne Mountain, the developer is still seeking to keep afloat. There are other financing sources which they can pursue and people working at the company are talking about moving on with their projects. Stargate Worlds has just emerged from a closed beta stage and early 2009 will see the firm launch of another closed beta for the MMO. If all goes well, then in late 2009, Cheyenne Mountain might put the title in public beta, allowing players to see what the game is all about.
If the videogame manages to translate the staples of the television show and its spin off into a credible game world and couple it with interesting MMO mechanics, then it could prove to be a hit.