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While Crayta was one of Stadia’s first exclusive games and gave players a world of their own to create and explore together (prop hunt was a load of fun!), it seems it will no longer be available to play. Ever since Google’s cloud gaming platform shut down last month, the unique title had a whole lot less spotlight.
Luckily, Facebook Gaming took it in a few years ago, and with the game hitting PC folks could still enjoy it whenever they wanted to. Sadly, according to Crayta’s Andy Shenton who posted some rather unfortunate news to Medium this week, not enough gamers did, and as a result, Crayta is shutting down in a month’s time.
We still believe this democratisation of game and virtual world creation is where the industry is headed but it’s with great sadness that we’re today announcing the closure of Crayta on all platforms, effective 4pm GMT (8am PT) on Friday, March 3, 2023.
As depressing as it is to see another game bite the dust thanks to Google’s decision to kill off an entire gaming community’s central hub of connection, Crayta’s development team has assured players that it will make the most of what time it has left by lining up a schedule chock-full of fun in-game activities, celebratory streams, and other events.
Andy did post a set of FAQs for anyone curious about how the wind down for the game will occur. In particular, you should know that once the servers are shuttered, your games will no longer be accessible. He recommends that you take screenshots or video captures of your content for nostalgia-sake. Anyone who coded a bunch of great stuff in LUA may want to archive this data for resume purposes.
To get a copy of your data, you can email dataprotectionofficer@unit2games.com before March 1, 2023, but you will need to verify your identity to complete that interaction. The good news is that Unit 2 Games seems to have made the decision to put Crayta to sleep for good so that it can achieve its goals for 2023 and beyond.
This may mean we’ll see something new from them over the next few years. If that’s the case, I’m hoping it has a similar feel or approach as Crayta! Given that they are employed by Facebook or “Meta”, I’m banking on it being a VR title, but that’s just a guess.
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