Hello Voyagers,
Even with the turbulent market conditions everyone is navigating, we made a terrible mistake!
When you needed us to communicate the most, there was silence. That silence gave wings to speculative rumours, and the vacuum of information subsequently created didn’t do anything to reverse that trend. And the only excuse we have is that we wanted to outline a comprehensive and positive plan to the community before making any announcements.
This was an obvious mistake, and we can only blame ourselves. A fast-moving industry will never be short of crises and shifting landscapes, but communications must be an overarching and consistent guiding light as we do this together.
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”― Mark Twain
Let’s get the elephant out of the room immediately. Hash Rush will continue its development and progress towards early access release (and actually much more in the end as a wider universe).
The Background
So, let’s jump into the retrospective for a better understanding of how and why this happened and, most importantly, what is being done on the go-forward plan.
First, Hash Rush is also our passion, and we are committed to seeing the game franchise launch, grow and evolve in collaboration with you all in the community. Following various closed/open playtest & functional development progress over the last year, the studio & management team were focused on the Q1 2023 Early Access release.
The internal reviews in the lead-up to this milestone showed a number of factors that raised concerns about the shape/form of the game, which of course, would have ticked the box concerning the wider release but would still not have been the right feature set for what we think the game needs to be to fully succeed in the scaling adoption of players. Therefore, we decided to significantly change upstream design plans for the game to calculate for a better downstream effect and redress many of the player-reported issues. (e.g., from reported stability of the game, play modes the market is demanding vs. the stand-alone game client, and also a boatload of ambitious gameplay features that were rushed into builds in a very short window of time to try to hit tight deadlines).
Still not where we want to be
In the internal review, we also identified that the game development resourcing model was not rising to the moment and the expectation for a game that would be online, multi-player (community), and delivering a game core loop which is ever long in satisfaction as players get deeper into the levels. Don’t get us wrong, there has been tons and tons of functionality, character development, and fun play progress even in current iterations — but it’s still not where we know we can get to as a part of a wider Hash Rush Universe.
So what is the plan now?
Right now, the main focus is to reassess the status of Hash Rush (RTS) and how it will move forward with the resources and manpower at hand. We have had to make difficult investment decisions like many projects navigating through this Winter Bear Market, including the letting go of some team members to rather focus on those biggest actions to impact the ongoing project. We are swinging for the fences, even if striking out sometimes.
We are also shaking up the development team, which has focused earlier on an RTS title that is effectively a stand-alone game client, and we believe even if a credible release on its own, it will not carry with it the wider appeal & collaborative play or different modes we seek to deliver in the experience. In aggregate, this has impacted the Early Access launch date of Hash Rush, which will be postponed. We will be confirming a revised attack plan/roadmap and prioritization of many features that the community has also been shouting for all along. Including, also an additional focus on mobile, which has received large feedback from stakeholders and players alike.
Hash Rush Post-Beta
The recent Hash Rush Beta provided an extended testing session with many of you. The results were mixed concerning a number of development milestones & feature functionality areas. Although overall players, for the most part, enjoyed the experience, there were many issues with the status, such as:
- Stability of the game with framerate dipping severely for players
- Gameplay issues and features not working as they should, with players reporting the same issues like a game crash after a unit threshold was reached (i.e., selecting individual units in the hundreds)
- Connection issues that prevented people from obtaining rewards for their time invested into the game. Players should have obtained everything, be it unique resources or crystals (Free Currency), after clearing a level, but this did not work as intended
We understand that the Beta was a pretty tough fight for some, and we made an attempt to tackle each issue, but that took time away from the Early Access goals, and the timeline toppled upon itself. We thank you for your feedback. Whether it was about the content, issues, or ideas for the future, all of it has been stored.
The Current Status of Hash Rush
Currently, the game lacks advancing through multiple levels, which would create a sense of moving forward for players. Yes, you could play on multiple maps, build your base of operations, recruit units and summon your heroes and gain rewards, but these rewards were often not working properly as connection token timeouts were a recurring obstacle.
Hash Rush is working together with its partners, who have already provided much of what we would need and have shown the capacity of their skillset to make Hash Rush come to life with stable and engaging gameplay as you fight back against the Crystal Scourge, cleanse planets and gain rewards from clearing levels and events that we will be focusing on delivering.
The team is grateful and well aware that the early backers and the community have been with us during this journey. Moving forward, we hope that the newly-presented direction will help us deliver the game universe foundations and an active game to our players. This ideal also includes the progress with $RUSH and DAO as we strive to give Hash Rush the status it deserves.
Community FAQ
The team summarizes the key community questions below👇 to address some of the burning questions emerging within the Hash Rush community.
- What is the current status of HR development? How much is done in percentage by far?
It is difficult to tie a number or percentage to the development and the progress we have made by far. The number is meaningless without the full backend.
- What led to development being halted? What are the contributing factors to this?
There were numerous factors, external and internal, that led to a halt in game production. Some of the deciding factors were slow technical progress, connection issues, feature bloat in a short timeframe, milestones being delayed, and, finally, unfavorable player retention.
- Does the company have funds to develop the game?
The company does have funds to develop the game further from this stage. However, the team is at a limited capacity in this case since we want to avoid a similar situation that led to the halt itself — huge monthly costs without reaching milestones.
- What is the nature of the talks HR is having with partners to continue development and what role will they have in the game’s future?
Our partners (MC) want to see the RTS game delivered, after which it could be improved with additional content. In this spirit, the Core should be presented in 2023, which we look forward to.
- What options is the HR management team exploring to continue product development?
We are currently exploring options with a few development companies to take the game to the level it needs to be. The team will share more info on the continuation of development in the upcoming DEV DIARIES.
- Why not sell the IP?
What is being negotiated around the Hash Rush development will be beneficial to not only the IP but also the token holders. Selling the IP would be a complicated venture because Hash Rush has its own token, $RUSH, and token holders must be among those who can benefit from the supposed IP sale. Selling the IP would further involve swapping tokens and determining a swap ratio. Moreover, It would take way too long to negotiate all this before going back to starting the main task, which is polishing and releasing the game. Hence why we’re already in talks with other partners. As we explore ways to continue with development, terms have been submitted from both sides and are being fine-tuned. Token holders are a part of these talks, and as a crucial part of this ecosystem, they won’t be ignored.
-Is Hash Rush dead?
Hash Rush is not dead but rather hibernating at the moment as the team is working on further development plans that should lead the game to its intended level.
