The Wayward Realms – Development Troubles Detailed

If you’re a fan of the older entries in The Elder Scrolls series, you’re probably aware that some of the original developers behind it have recently founded OnceLost Games with the goal of creating The Wayward Realms – a modernized spiritual successor to Daggerfall.

However, there is now this extensive Medium article from the guy who actually got the ball rolling on that whole project, where he talks about his experiences working on The Wayward Realms now that he’s no longer a part of the team. All in all, it’s a rather disheartening story of internal clashes, tanked publisher negotiations, and a general lack of professionalism and enthusiasm for the project.

Here’s just a few sample paragraphs:

And this press buzz led to our first serious publisher contender reaching out to us. In respect to all those involved, I will call them “X”, but I’m sure you’ve heard of them if you’re familiar with PC games.

“X” were very interested in what we were offering, and though not traditionally known for RPGs, that was a sector they were trying to expand into.

We did a virtual meeting with them (over a lunch break for me), and we seemed to hit it off well. I had updated our pitch deck before the call, and the types of game mechanics they were looking for pretty much mirrored on the pitch we had already built before talking to them. We were practically finishing each others’ sentences — a good sign!

Vijay was obviously experienced. He has 80 game releases under his belt, as producer and/or in the pitching phase. We all deferred to his judgment when it came to pitching and publisher decisions.

[…]

What happened next is fuzzy, but Vijay would have the habit of sending emails out late at night, directly to “X”, without CC’ing our email addresses, or talking with us first. He did review his original pitch email with us, but as far as I can recall, the last one slipped out on his own.

Distinctly, I remember him pushing our reps at the publisher for more money than they initially offered (from what I understand, not entirely uncommon).

Paraphrasing, he said in his email to “X”…

“…We need [~$12 million] in order to compete with the upcoming releases of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Elder Scrolls VI.”

I didn’t take much notice of that statement at the time, but now that I look back, it was the reddest of flags.

[…]

After that email, we had a bit of a silence from “X”, then they responded in an unusually short email. Basically to sum it up, they were no longer interested.

We asked if there was an opening for a re-pitch, and we didn’t get an affirmative. We had scared them away.

Now, if you head on over to RPG Codex, you’ll find a quote there from Ted Peterson where he doesn’t openly deny anything mentioned in the article, but points out that it’s just one way of looking at things and that the project is still very much alive.