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Fractured Online is an Indie MMO that’s been in development for several years now. It was a game I briefly covered earlier in my career, so, on a personal level, I’m glad to see it still chugging along. However, 2024 was not very kind to the game. Given the competition in the online gaming space, the game didn’t perform as well as they’d hoped. Now, down to just a trio of developers, the three co-founders of Dynamight Studios, they continue on.
An open-world sandbox MMORPG is certainly an interesting idea, one Fractured Online’s team has been working hard on. The Indie MMO isn’t dead yet, and on January 3, 2025, Jacopo, one of the co-founders of the company, made a statement via Discord.
Indie MMO Fractured Online faces troubles after trying to go F2P, now just a three-person team
Unfortunate news for fans of Indie MMO Fractured Online came through their Discord channel. An announcement was posted by Jacopo, who apologized for not updating the community in a while, stating that the team was really going through some hard times over the last year.
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Jacopo was open and honest about what had happened but also said he would elaborate further at a later date. The long and short was that the team simply didn’t have the budget for any noteworthy marketing, and Fall 2024 was a pretty serious month when it came to competition:
“The full release in the summer and the F2P transition in November have performed way below expectations. I will elaborate more on the whys later on, but in a nutshell: we barely had any budget to spend on marketing, and we've faced some serious competition this fall.”
Late Fall 2024, frankly, was all about Path of Exile 2, as far as we can see. It was a game that was really taking over, especially as it got close to its official Early Access in December. In general, 2024 was a big year for MMOs of all sizes and flavors, so it’s not hard to see how Fractured Online could, unfortunately, get lost in the shuffle.
For this reason, they had to scale down from 7 developers to just three — Jacopo, Andrea, and Michele. Of course, this means content will take longer to develop, and they’ve also been working unpaid for the last two years on top of that. However, it’s not all bad news:
“That doesn't make it any easier, but development of Fractured Online moves on. Luckily the backend is stable, so we can focus on new features, and revenues are enough to pay for servers, taxes, and a little for ourselves.”
Jacopo would go briefly into his personal life as well, opening up about a bit of burnout due to this and other personal matters, but he’s getting better. The hunt for a publisher hasn’t ended, though, and the developers are seeking investment to make sure the game goes live.
The Indie MMO developer also told the community Discord to feel free to send questions, and he’ll answer them as soon as possible. Though things are hard for the game right now, it sounds like they have the community’s support and have very much not given up.
It’s never a good thing to hear about a game struggling through the course of the development cycle — especially an interesting Indie MMO like this one. However, it does sound like Fractured Online’s team is doing everything it can to ensure more content comes out for the community and that they can try to secure investment so the game can become the best version of itself.
