Late last month, newly founded development studio Molten Games unexpectedly shutdown, leaving close to 60 employees without a job and an unannounced Free-to-Play title on the cutting room floor.

Originally founded in the middle of 2013, Molten Games was the amalgamation of several developers from key studios including Blizzard, SOE and Relic Entertainment. Backed by a multi-million dollar investment from NCSoft and the promise of a hands off publishing approach, the studio seemed destined for greatness.

So what happened? A requiem of Molten Games posted by one of its former developers, the studio unexpectedly lost all of its funding, prompting an immediate shutdown. As to why the studio lost its funding, that much is unclear. Speaking in regards to Molten Games accomplishments, the unnamed dev proclaimed Molten “to be a profound success”.

The developer went on to divulge a bit more concerning Molten Games secret project “Blunderbuss” including revealing several never before seen videos of the game. Blunderbuss apparently utilized the brand new Unreal 4 engine and was set in a fantasy steampunk world. The featured gameplay appeared PvP in nature and showcased a few of Blunderbuss’s characters including a steam powered siege tank and catapult.

While no official statement has been given regarding the future of the Blunderbuss IP, given the dissolution of Molten Games and the lack of funding, it’s safe to assume the title has been shelved for the foreseeable future.



  1. NC Soft probably Garriott’ed them and garroted their funding because the Asian market wouldn’t be interested in playing err gold-farming. I’m sorry that another set of Dev’s had to leave their building before noon, and really hope they didn’t tie ownership of their Intellectual Property to the initial funding from that publisher. Where the money went or was it withdrawn, we’ll never know, NC Soft loves their Non-Disclosure Agreements and if they did give them control of the IP, NC Soft will never release it. “MINE!”

  2. I really, really, really hope it was because NCSoft realized the CoH community did everything in their power towarn people off of anything they touch.
    Nobody should trust NCSoft for ANYTHING.

  3. This deal with molten is unclear they seemed like a good company-to-be and then boom funding gone how the f@ck can it be just – gone?! UFO stole it or what? p_p

  4. From what i seen in the videos, game did not seem bad, but i don’t think it looked that great either (i don’t mean graphics. I got a bad pc anyway, bad graphics just means i can play it xD).
    Character introduction, like most games do, is a mix of cinematic with gameplay. For example the Reckoner looks so amazing in the first cinematic part (stepping on a dude, grabbing another and throwing him away), but so basic aoe/cleave attacks in the gameplay. Catapult did not seem so great either, stay safe – spam attack.
    What i really liked was the siege tank and only because of his “deploy wings” ability, to create cover for his troops.
    Gonna repeat, game did not looked bad, but did not seem a gem either. I actually think i would prefer something like Panzar over this one (they seem alike).

    • Not really NCsoft’s fault if Molten couldn’t manage their money or find proper investors to keep the company afloat prior to releasing their first title.

      Not saying NCsoft is an angel here, but it appears that they did pay the original funding for this. I would imagine that the game showed no promise financially for NCsoft to offer no further investment, otherwise I doubt they would be so willing to throw millions in the gutter.

      Everything about this story leads me to believe that Molten took some risks and failed, there’s nothing wrong with that to me and I congratulate them on taking those risks in a market where stagnation and rehashed ideas are the norm.

      • I wouldn’t be surprised, actually if NCSoft did pull funding, we do not know though. Thing is NCSoft has not only been bad recently but they’d been receeding recently. They are shrinking their influence everywhere.

        • NCsoft already stated that they fulfilled they’re commitment with Molten. It was startup funds, and therein lies the problem, Molten ran out of money and could not find further investors (or so it sounds from the limited info we have available)

  5. wow this game looks so great its so sad that Molten studios is “down” always sad when people lose their jobs especially in this times we living good luck to all those people who lost their jobs i hope they find new ones to feed their families

  6. WTF… this game looks awesome… how dafuq is it possible that the studio unexpectedly lost all of its funding. This isn’t even possible if you see the news on the website. And i quote ‘NCSOFT has dropped a multimillion dollar Series A investment to aid in the start-up of Molten Games’

    • This is NCSoft you’re talking about.. Shutting down games and attempting to subtract their way to victory is what they do. I’m not talking about City of Heroes- err, not JUST City of Heroes. I’m also talking about Exsteel, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runner, Auto Assault…

      It’s their business model. Once a year they take a game out and they kill it.

      I’d like to think they’ve wised up and need the money to restore CoH, but more likely they plan to double down on Guild Wars 2.

      I guess if I have a question it’s this- Given the total lack of commitment that NCSoft has for it’s games, how does anyone get fooled into having any interest in an NCSoft title? I mean, granted, the game looks great. But even if you ever got to play it, you’d play in constant agony of fear of when the inevitable shutdown day was.

      I mean, consider CoH. Supposedly it was losing money. But we were never told. We never had a chance to suggest rate hikes, service reductions, or anything like that. We thought we were doing good business and one day it was “Oh. We’re shutting down in three months”

      But then in the time since, NCSoft’s stock has plunged. Their earnings suck. How do you ditch a game that loses money, then lose over half your companies earnings?

      What I’m saying is simply this…not only do they kill games frequently…they do it for nonsensical reasons.


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