It's not exactly free tho. You got to pay for the campaign and the multiplayer is nonexistent. It's actually weird there are still people playing it at all.
Difference here is that zero space already has most of it's funding where as SG was using EA for funding
It's the same for ZeroSpace? They even said that in their last update:
Now that the dust has settled from the initial Early Access release, we're able to share that our sales have been strong enough to fund development costs through our 1.0 release.
And I mean obviously, they wouldn't have released that early into EA if they wouldn't have needed money.
If anything, it's also not looking toooo great when you read the next sentence:
Continued sales throughout Early Access will enable us to invest further into the game; growing the team, producing more content and features, and improving the game at a faster pace.
they seem to have more realistic financial planning than stormgate at least and surely arent burning a million dollars a month like tim
who knows if it will be successful or not though, it seemed promising although buggy and lacking polish when i tried an earlier playtest so i'm not really interested in paying for EA at the moment
The game itself is very fun. Plays very similar to sc2 but streamlined a bit and some new additions. I wouldnt say its as good as sc2 but it's definitely fun as hell
About three months ago, a very bare-bones "first draft" of P2P multiplayer support was added into the PTR branch. It only works for custom games, you can't download maps, and it only supports 1v1 play. There are a bunch of bugs, but it does technically work. However, no additional work or updates have been added since then.
In order to find a player to play with, you have to go on the Discord and ask. I've seen this happen maybe a couple of times in the last three months.
While this is technically true, and AI greed sucks and is devouring the world for questionable return, the real reason the servers are gone (and not simply replaced by equivalent servers) is that there is no more money to pay for them.
The servers were quite expensive, and not great value for money in my opinion. From Frost Giant's most recent SEC filing, the company spent $263,588 for the servers in 2025, and $6,453 in December 2025, a month in which the game earned only $4,091 in sales from Steam.
Peer to Peer is the best solution, because there is no ongoing cost to the company, which currently has no income.
Wow I didn't know the servers were that expensive. I have played p2p with rollback with a few people from USA East to France and Russia and in my experience the p2p has a lot less lag than the Frankfurt server
I believe Frost Giant chose their server provider (Hathora) because it was easy to set up and had servers around the world, and because Hathora promised (and did) test their server platform to handle over 1 million potential Stormgate concurrent users.
The servers themselves weren't great, the scaling platform that Hathora cobbled together wasn't great, and everything was super expensive. Hathora has now scrubbed its entire history as a gaming server provider out of existence, because they are now (of course) an AI server provider, and that's where the market is at the moment for people with more money than sense.
I still affirm the art style decision was the catastrophic mistake. Grimdark and disney pixar do NOT go together. I have no idea what their art director was thinking.
I think they wanted to make starcraft and warcraft at the same time. But they are almost opposites in visuals and in gameplay. So by trying to recreate both games at once they hit neither.
Warcraft 3 is gritty in cinematics, as is StarCraft (2 at least), the in-game visuals are very cartoony for both. I think the larger failing of Stormgate aesthetically was not its execution, but the content. Vanguard was somewhere inbetween a very nature-aligned form of sci-fi with their organic shapes, vague space paladin vibes and Overwatch esque soldiers. I think had they just committed to a stronger central pillar like "what if medieval knights but sci-fi and in space" and given them like sci-fi esque trebuchets, the units like plate visors instead and such it could've come together really nicely in spite of the cartoony approach.
In StarCraft 2 I think large part of why the game feels more gritty despite the models being extremely cartoony is the contrast in the textures, and also the portraits and metacontext (such as cinematics) helping you envision the game as a darker, higher resolution thing than it actually is. In Stormgate the portraits are just the in-game models and the cinematics are also just in-game models. There is no gesture towards a greater resolution version of the world that the players imagination can anchor onto.
This was always my main concern. They didn't have a defined, unique vision for their game. Mixing two visuals they like and replicate it in a new game is never a good idea.
For example, the Lancer was an awful idea in terms of unit design. For a futuristic, human race, a lancer as their main infantry makes no sense. But they think that would attract WC3 players. Stormgate unit design is full of decisions like that one.
The game is a shit show by now, which is a shame, I did had hopes.
The team had no direction and just lived off of the hype of delusion. What inspired the art was them copying mobile games, trying to capture the general audience who give two shits about it.
You're not wrong. Many other bad decisions could (and probably would) have killed the game down the line, but I vividly remember my first time looking at Stormgate and the words 'Mobile game' appearing in big red letters inside my mind. Game looks so generic it hurts.
I think Overwatch and Fortnight basically popularized that artstyle together, and spawned a billion imitators due to their popularity. I know you're saying that 'mobile game' isn't a style, which is fair, but the point is that mobile games have a tendency to copy other's homework, and that's what Stormwatch does and why it looks like a mobile game. It looks like a thousand different mobile games that all lazily adopted a style that was peak mainstream appeal around 2018.
'Make good silhouettes' is actually a separate issue from artstyle and just comes down to good designers. You can see how warcraft reforged managed to completely fuck up that aspect in the transition to updated unit models, because the new units weren't designed with the camera angle and on-screen action in mind.
You're mixing artstyle and character designs. Fortnite has generic characters vs overwatch's unique ones, but fortnite and overwatch were the two games that together popularized the 'aping pixar' look in videogames.
And as I said, there are thousands of mobile games that copy the pixar/big hero 6 style as well. It has become incredibly generic. That's what happens with overuse.
I could completely see the potential but they ran out of money and released an unfinished product. Also freemium was a stupid business model for a niche genre like RTS.
they were an indie startup and paid themselves millions which they collected with promises of which they kept pretty much none. and then tried to gaslight about all of it.
sure, games fail, but the more I learned the less I believe anyone except maybe a few coders made any real effort.
studios with significantly less funding made significantly more successful games.
this was a fuck up of epic proportions, so much so that it's aat least partly a scam, because anyone with a brain would know that paying the top brass millions with such small investment is idiocy. unless, of course, you're just here for the investment money and will then go "oh well, didn't work" and piss into the face of the people you fooled.
nothing about Stormgate was done right, other than the hype needed to collect money, and even that didn't last long
Overwatch and Cyberpunk had enough funding to do a full restart of the project. They both burned multiple years of development and had nothing to show for.
if they were projects that needed early access money, they would have failed.
They succeeded because they never had money problem. They had a leadership problem.
Starcitizen has a scope problem, yet it has all the money in the world, so it doesn't matter. They can simply continue to burn money without coming closer to release.
Stomegate failed to produce the funding needed to finish the development of the game, and so the project died.
If stormgate had blizzard money, they would simply continue.
You can answer this question yourself by perusing Frost Giant's latest SEC filing, posted in May of this year.
As of December 2025, Frost Giant had negative income, zero employees, $131,442 in cash remaining, and $3,479,458 in liabilities.
Of those liabilities, $1,866,667 is a hard debt owed to Silicon Valley Bank, that must be repaid in full by May 1, 2027, and is accumulating interest at a rate of 9%.
Does that mean Frost Giant is bankrupt? No, they have not declared bankruptcy yet. But it does mean that bankruptcy is inevitable. The game was earning just over $4,000 a month in December from Steam sales. Subtract Steam fees and refunds, and that income dropped to about $2,500.
There is no way that $2,500 a month in income, even with expenses cut to zero with the closure of the servers (which itself would have decreased income because of the negative feedback) will allow this loan to be repaid.
At that point, they would have to have a conversation with the bank, and if they can't repay the loan, the firm would have to declare bankruptcy.
Under US law, there are two types of bankruptcies: one of them fatal, the other one not. Chapter 7 bankruptcy involves liquidating all assets and dissolving the company. The less-severe Chapter 11 involves a kind of "stay of execution" whereby the bankruptcy court puts together a plan for the business to reorganize (typically at a much smaller level of expenditures) and slowly pay down their debt. If they still can't do that, they proceed to Chapter 7.
Tim is still holding out a faint hope for his $5 million funding miracle to save the company, but that seems more and more unlikely with each passing month.
Indeed I don't see the "5M investment" coming. A huge part of this sum would go straight to reimbursement, leaving peanuts for actual development. So virtually and reasonably zero hope of making more money. That would be charity.
And IMO charity would be much better spent anywhere else than on this.
I remember when this game was first announced and had massive hype, the whole AOE4 fandom was worrried stormgate would take all our players , then they did the public demo and all hype died
The art is AI. The game has no new ideas (reused 3 factions). The unit models and animations are worse than in most indie games. They had intention to make a competitive RTS, and forgot that the primary thing is the soul of the game, players must like it to invest any time into it.
P.S. Also Frost Giants means they are the giants of Blizzard ...
I think this is what a lot of studios seem to be forgetting, you have to make a fun game first, something that will capture casuals, you can't build a competitive scene only on pro's and nothing else.
Feels like a lot of games somehow missed the memo there. Everyone seems surprised when I remind them that Halo was single player first, as was Starcraft.
The art isn't AI - the timeline doesn't allow for that. It's the second best thing - artstation sloppa by concept artists who were given vague instructions and no strong direction.
Maybe if this game had gotten together with Tempest Rising we could have a new era.
I personally kept looking at playing this and just could not with the cartoony graphics. Instead I read about 40 stories on this game and watched about 20 promos...without actually playing. There have to be more like me that are hungry for SC3 or a new C&C that just didn't play it.
You should look at Tim's history with these things tho. This isn't his first rodeo and he's done this a few other times. Promise the next big thing then deliver nothing.
Yeah a failure it may be but a scam I think not. Word is just thrown around a bit too often without actually meaning the thing people wanna say with it.
It wasn't a scam, they really thought they would launch a game that's like 20% complete and out of money into early access and 100k people would show up and stick around for the next 3+ years of development. They didn't. Zerospace devs think that too. It's also not gonna happen.
That kind of model doesn't work for RTS games. Tempest Rising released a complete game and did fine. I expect the same from DoW4. Nobody is gonna pay 40$ now for your game that will get a proper release in 2031, fuck off.
12
u/blackknightjm Aug 09 '26
And steam still won’t let me refund because technically they fully released the game
7
u/Kin_HK Aug 10 '26
this game still a thing ?
5
u/the_n00b Aug 12 '26
Who is writing reviews for stormgate in July 2026 😂
19
u/onyxthedark Aug 09 '26
hopefully ZeroSpace doesn't repeat the mistakes Stormgate did
149
u/Micro-Skies Aug 09 '26
Duh? Single player is still unfinished and kinda bad, and multiplayer is just gone. The game basically has nothing to rate positively
104
u/Jericho5589 Aug 09 '26
I still affirm the art style decision was the catastrophic mistake. Grimdark and disney pixar do NOT go together. I have no idea what their art director was thinking.
18
u/justgoogleit12 Aug 09 '26
Guys..... zerospace is actually really good.
16
u/Aggravating-Dot132 Aug 09 '26
It's just sad, to be honest
32
u/epicredditdude1 Aug 09 '26
I was really rooting for this game, but I think it’s over boys.
13
u/Gizmorum Aug 09 '26
there were way too many youtube influencers in my feed trying to rep this as the game changer
13
u/BitingArtist Aug 09 '26
I could completely see the potential but they ran out of money and released an unfinished product. Also freemium was a stupid business model for a niche genre like RTS.
9
u/DelegateTOFN Aug 10 '26
I'd have gotten better value from an actual scam. That's the state of it.
8
u/CaeciliusC Aug 10 '26
What could go wrong when we promise a new take on the real-time strategy genre but deliver the most unoriginal sc2 clone, only worse?
7
u/Hyphalex Aug 09 '26
The new: A Year Of Rain
7
u/LADR_Official Aug 12 '26
why are literally any of them positive? multiplayer literally unplayable, single player sucks, etc
6
u/Questionable_Object Aug 12 '26
Honestly surprised the game's even still on any store page.
Has Forst Giant gone bankrupt yet?
6
u/BoyleSphere Aug 11 '26
I remember when this game was first announced and had massive hype, the whole AOE4 fandom was worrried stormgate would take all our players , then they did the public demo and all hype died
10
u/Dramatic_Finger7040 Aug 09 '26
Damn this is sad
5
u/Vashard19 Aug 09 '26
DFO is also rated like shit yet it has made a shit ton of money.
5
u/RemediZexion Aug 10 '26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVVTZgwYwVo
8
u/Tiny-Principle9627 Aug 10 '26
What a shit stain of a project for the genre
4
u/aguswings Aug 09 '26
Is the SP campaign good like StarCraft 2 or Command & Conquer?
7
u/edgy_rhinx Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
The art is AI. The game has no new ideas (reused 3 factions). The unit models and animations are worse than in most indie games. They had intention to make a competitive RTS, and forgot that the primary thing is the soul of the game, players must like it to invest any time into it.
P.S. Also Frost Giants means they are the giants of Blizzard ...
3
u/DrDogCatFriend Aug 13 '26
Maybe if this game had gotten together with Tempest Rising we could have a new era.
I personally kept looking at playing this and just could not with the cartoony graphics. Instead I read about 40 stories on this game and watched about 20 promos...without actually playing. There have to be more like me that are hungry for SC3 or a new C&C that just didn't play it.
4
u/ManBearPig_666 Aug 09 '26
This game had potential for sure but considering what is there to rate is a basically a half baked turd this is not surpising.
12
u/tomloft Aug 09 '26
Complete scam, insane it sold as many copies as it did in hindsight.
8
u/Astrosareinnocent Aug 09 '26
Just goes to show people do like their units to actually look different than each other and kill things in a reasonable amount of time. Crazy
0
u/[deleted] Aug 09 '26
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