Sudden, surprising, and frankly sad news today: Electronic Arts has shuttered Mythic Entertainment (or EA Mythic, as I suppose they were most recently known). The studio, as Kotaku first reported, was closed as part of EA’s ongoing consolidation of its mobile development efforts.

The official statement from EA is as follows:

“We are closing the EA Mythic location in Fairfax, Virginia, as we concentrate mobile development in our other studio locations. We are working with all impacted employees to provide assistance in finding new opportunities, either within EA or with other companies via an upcoming job fair.”

Mythic, you’ll all doubtless recall, inherited control Ultima Online — and copious amounts of material from Origin Systems — some years back, although they are best known for the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot. Both games were, in fact, spun off to Broadsword Online Games (founded by former Mythic co-founder Rob Denton) in February of this year, in what seemed (at the time) to be a last-ditch move to save two historic MMORPGs from being shut down.

Broadsword, by the way, has put up a note on their homepage about Mythic’s closure:

To the dedicated communities of Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot,

Today, we all received the news that Electronic Arts will be winding down the operation of the Mythic studio. We at Broadsword would like our community to rest assured that Broadsword will continue to partner with EA to invest in the community, operations and continued development of both Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. The spirit and brand of Mythic will continue to live on in both of these gaming communities. We look forward to continuing our journey with our committed fans and players to ensure that both Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot continue to grow and thrive for years to come.

Sincerely,
Rob Denton
President, Broadsword Online Games

Notably, there’s nothing about the closure on Mythic’s website proper. But then, it still lists Ultima Online amd Dark Age of Camelot as games the studio is working on, so clearly it hasn’t been updated in a while.

It’s probably pointless to speculate about it overmuch, but I can’t help but wonder if the transition of their non-mobile properties to another studio was the first indication that the studio was headed for closure. Because really, they put Ultima Forever out to pasture at about the same time; the last update published for that game (also in February) added the ability to become an Avatar…and not much else. And the update before that added infinite dungeons to the game, which seemed even at the time to be a way of providing filler content in lieu of any new areas to explore or levels to advance into. Mythic did evidently release a small fix for Ultima Forever’s chat system recently, but for the most part the game has been effectively abandoned since February, with all development efforts being focused instead on Dungeon Keeper.

Now, Dungeon Keeper was arguably a critical flop; most reviewers panned the game. I’m not sure it deserved the level of criticism it received; it was actually a very well-made game for the most part, and fun to play. Its freemium model was a bit on the egregious side; you didn’t get a lot of bang for your buck, with additional imps being particularly overpriced. But even so, the game seemed to be doing well; there were regular updates being released for it, frequent in-game events…and lots of players online (judging by the number of other players that attacked my dungeon on a daily basis). Its forums were consistently busy, as was its Facebook page. The game seemed, in other words, to be in good health, and I would have assumed it was making money for Mythic.

And if one commenter at Kotaku — who claims to be the wife of a now-former Mythic developer — can be believed, the studio’s closure came as a complete shock to the people thereat, as well.

Ultima Forever certainly managed to divide the opinion of the Ultima fandom; some loved it, some hated it, and there was a bit of room in the middle there for a smattering of other viewpoints. I loved the game, personally, and while I will concede that it is not without its issues, it was very obviously a passion project headed up by people who loved Ultima dearly. It was ever thus, really. And it was a survivor, as well; EA tried to cancel the game twice, and the team had to work with threadbare resources for much of its development. But survive it did…at least for a time.

Sadly, Ultima Forever shipped in an incomplete state, missing both systems and locations that had been present in its PC alpha demo. Indeed, only the first part of what had been planned as a three-act story was released when the game went live on the iOS App Store, and even that wasn’t complete. (According to the plan for the game that Mythic explained to me some time ago, becoming an Avatar was meant to be the end of the first act; overcoming the Black Weep would have been the focus of Act 2.) And Mythic very quickly fell behind the planned six-week update cycle.

But even so: this was a game — and, by extension, a studio — animated by a deep love for all things Ultima, who wanted to do everything they could (with next-to-no resources) to bring the Ultima name back into the limelight…and then not in a way that merely saw it appropriated for content that was otherwise unrelated to the lore of the classic series, as was the case for Lord of Ultima. In his more grandiose moments, Paul Barnett even told me of a grander vision he had for Ultima and Ultima Forever, which was a continued series of games that would have seen each successive title in the series, from Ultima 5 onward, given the same sort of re-imagining that Ultima Forever did for Ultima 4. There was even talk, at one point, of releasing a toolkit with which fans could make their own scenarios set in Britannia.

This was all well before the transition to mobile, of course, which naturally changed everything…including Mythic as a studio. And maybe that was ultimately what led to the events of today; the mobile gaming market is alarmingly cutthroat, and it’s far easier to sink in it than it is to swim, let alone to excel. And it’s sad that Mythic’s forays into mobile gaming evidently didn’t pan out as expected, because the games were — for the most part — excellent. Ultima Forever should have been a great mobile RPG, and Dungeon Keeper should have been a great mobile strategy game. And really, both games are exactly that: really great examples of their respective genres. They are just hampered by what I can only assume is EA Mobile’s “one size fits all” approach to freemium monetization.

And granted, it’s a monetization model that, in the general case, works; it’s little different than what Rovio uses for Angry Birds, or what Supercell uses for Clash of Clans. It serves EA well in The Simpsons: Tapped Out and The Sims: Free Play. But it very obviously didn’t work for Ultima Forever, and now I’m wondering whether it worked for Dungeon Keeper as well.

At any rate, whatever the reason for the closure, let’s all keep the now-former staff of Mythic in our thoughts and/or prayers tonight, that they might all come out of this with heads held high, and that they might all find new studios who will benefit from their talents and dedication.

For myself, I’d just like to say, to all of them: thank you. Thank you for trying to do something new, different, and meaningful with Ultima, and for reaching out to the community in the ways that you did when in pursuit of that goal. It is a shame that it had to come to the abrupt halt that it did, but your hearts were certainly in the right place…and good on you for that.