Lego shuts down Bionicle fan game 8 years into development, and the team thinks it knows why: "Our project was too easy to mistake for an official product"

a bunch of fan-made bionicles standing in a forest — (Image credit: Unmasked Games)

The fan-made Bionicle: Masks of Power game has to stop development because the Lego Group asked the volunteer devs of Team Kanohi to cease their work on the project.

In a video posted to YouTube, project lead Jordan Willis says, "For the last eight years, we've been hard at work building the Bionicle game of our dreams. Through it all, we've endeavored to communicate openly with the Lego Group following their fairplay guidelines for fan projects in good faith." You can read the Lego Group's fair play rules right here.

BIONICLE: Masks of Power - Postmortem Demo Walkthrough (No Commentary) - YouTube

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"Unfortunately, the Lego Group's stance on fan works appears to have changed," Willis continues. "Despite our efforts to work with them, we have been asked to shutter the project in its entirety."

Unfortunately, even in professional game development, cancellations are all too common. The Last of Us Factions 2 was supposedly "great," but it was still scrapped. And now that it's been discovered Marathon used a lot of an artist's work without her permission, the future of that game is uncertain, too.

The team has pivoted away from the Bionicle game and is instead working on Project Rustbound, "a brand-new, original game." Team Kanohi also shared a video showcasing the demo for Masks of Power that it had been working on, so hopefully it can salvage a lot of the work put into that and reuse it – albeit without any Bionicle branding – for Rustbound.

Despite the sad news, Team Kanohi still has some positive words to share. "From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has supported us over the long journey to get where we are today," its statement reads. "We’ve grown from just a couple of Bionicle fans trying to make the type of game we wished we had as kids into a fully-fledged independent game studio. And the only reason we’ve been able to grow this much is through all of your support and love. Thank you."

For now, check out all the upcoming video game release dates of 2025 so you know what other projects you have to look forward to.

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I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

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