Celeste developer abruptly cancels new game after 5 years of development after founding member departs over copyright "fracture"

After more than five years of development, Earthblade, the new game from the developers of acclaimed indie sensation Celeste, has been canceled.

Celeste developer Maddy Thorson posted an update on the blog of Earthblade studio Extremely OK Games, announcing that she and development partner Noel Berry had "made the difficult decision to cancel Earthblade." That decision was made in December, but Thorson and Berry held off on announcing the cancelation to ensure they had some time "to process, grieve, and work towards accepting this."

Thorson explains that the cancelation was kickstarted by a "fracture" that developed between her and Berry on one side, and another long-time development partner, Pedro Medeiros, about the IP rights behind Celeste. A resolution was reached, though Thorson says she won't be speaking publicly about that dispute, but Medeiros departed EXOK to work on their own project.

Thorson says that that departure "wasn't the only factor in cancelling the game, but it did prompt us to take a serious look at whether fighting through to finish Earthblade was the right path forward." While the game showed promise, she says that "it was [...] not as far along as one would expect after such a protracted development process." Earthblade entered development in 2019, after the success of Celeste, and was officially announced in 2021. Originally set to launch in 2023, it was pushed back into 2024 at the end of 2022. Clearly, that new release date was also not reached - something the team had already alluded to in March.

Thorson claims that "I do believe that if we soldiered on despite it all, [...] Earthblade could still be a great game." However, she and Berry also acknowledge that development "has been a struggle for a long time." That struggle wasn't helped by the pressure heaped on the team by the success of Celeste, which encouraged the team "to deliver something bigger and better."

After five years working on Earthblade, Thorson acknowledges that its cancelation is likely disappointing for many fans of the team's work. However, she says that the plan is to "take all of the (many!) lessons we've learned from Earthblade, wipe the slate clean, and refocus ourselves back to smaller-scale projects." She and Berry are "prototyping" new work, and attempting to "rediscover game development in a manner closer to how we approached it at Celeste's or Towerfall's inception."

If you're mourning Earthblade, rediscover what made Celeste so good with our list of the best platform games ever.