King under the Mountain from developer Rocket Jump Technology, a simulation-based settlement-building strategy game, that was going through a big upgrade and re-brand with Mountaincore ended up shutting down and being open sourced.
King under the Mountain was picked up by a unnamed publisher, who helped finance a big upgrade to the game. 9 months into expanding the game — the publisher backed out. Why? As the developer said “They were worried that a number of similar games that have released in the time between would cause it to struggle to stand out.”.
I wonder if the Dwarf Fortress Steam Release has something to do with this … But it feels like the timeline might not check out?
This happened in January, but: