Microsoft discontinues support for Project Spark
Sunset for creation tool after 2 years service
Microsoft has announced that it will be discontinuing support for creation tool Project Spark, removing user created content and removing the game from the Xbox store.
In a statement released on Friday, May 13, the publisher revealed that Spark would be taken down from sale on the same day, with the online services available until August 12. Any content downloaded locally will still be available.
"This was an extremely difficult decision for our team that we do not take lightly," the statement reads. "When 'Project Spark' transitioned away from active development last fall, many of our team members moved to other projects within Microsoft Studios. While this means there have been no layoffs at Microsoft, it also means it's simply no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping 'Project Spark' up and running with meaningful updates and bug fixes, so we have come to this hard decision."
Project Spark was an interesting move for Microsoft, but obviously hasn't proven successful enough to warrant long term investment. Used to create movies, games and other experiences, Spark was thought by some to be a move in the direction of the promised "every Xbox is a dev kit" announcement made by Microsoft during the initial reveal of the One at E3.
Also... wtf? Removing all user-created content? Do any of these users have a say as to keeping their own games they worked so hard on or even sharing what they made at some point before they get wiped? Imagine making one's FIRST game with Spark and good, bad or otherwise, that work is suddenly zapped out of existence before it's even part of a future portfolio?
TOS and EULA aside, this is almost like book burning to me or a parent trashing their kid's artwork out of spite or whatever. Yuck.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Greg Wilcox on 16th May 2016 7:18pm
It's the 2nd attempt from MS after Kudo Game Lab, which is also a great tool for kids... and still available to download. That team did an excellent job on both products. It was great to use Kudo Game Lab to test design candidates.
It's a shame that a wealthy company like MS has to shut down those servers.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Florian Dhesse on 17th May 2016 5:54am
The user-created content will no longer be available to download after they shut down the online servers on August 12th but you can still download pretty much any user(or self) created content up to that date and play it in offline mode after the shut down on both Xbox One and PC .
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Jace on 18th May 2016 12:27am