Starting a game, particularly one as big as this, is a huge undertaking, and it is simply an immense amount to take on. From the very beginning it was an ambitious undertaking. Accepting that even after this long time and long development that the game is never going to be what it needs to be hurts, and instead of giving you a new, loose release window it's important that we’re honest with both ourselves as the creators, and with you, the community. Unfortunately, from today this is now a cancelled project and we’re incredibly sorry to let you all down.

Life of Rome was a passion project from the start, and never did we think it would gain such a large following so quickly – announcing it too soon was the first mistake, it was too soon to make the project public which is painfully obviously now. The second was allowing pre-ordering which is an enormous regret, this was irresponsible and completely the wrong time to begin accepting them. Since then the development has been continuing albeit slowly, we gained developers and we lost developers, however we have realised it's not going to be able to meet the vision and to the standard it needed to hit without substantial financial support, which unfortunately we have failed numerous times this year in securing. We're deeply sorry for not taking the right actions throughout this project.

We want to thank the community for their support and their belief in the project from the beginning; to also thank those of you who always supported and helped with the development of the game. We also want to acknowledge those who financially backed this project through HumbleBundle pre-orders. Humble do not officially support refunds after 60 days however we want to be committed to refunding as many people who generously supported and pre-ordered. Please email support@lifeofrome.com with your pre-order details and your PayPal address.

Thank you all again for the continued support and love you have shown for the project, and once again please know how deeply sorry we are to let you down and more importantly the way we've conducted updates through the many months of silence throughout Life of Rome’s development.

A failed dream and a lesson learnt.
Breakout Studio