Palo Alto-based studio Artillery has closed, more than 3 years after it first announced it was developing a browser-based real-time strategy game with eSports personality Sean "Day[9]" Plott in the lead design role.

It's the apparent end of a studio with an intriguing story: Artillery originally set out to make a competitive RTS in HTML5, codenamed Atlas, but ran into trouble and switched gears to focus on debuting Atlas as a more traditional PC/Mac game. 

"Chrome and Firefox feature aggressive release schedules, which is great for consumers but problematic for the development of large, intensive web applications," wrote Artillery cofounder Ian Langworth last year. "Frequent new features and security updates result in a great browsing experience, but we found it impossible to deliver consistent stability and performance as our application platform shifted beneath us."

Shortly thereafter Artillery picked up some investment from Chinese game giant Tencent, and development on Atlas seemed to progress. Back in August Plott abruptly announced he was leaving the company, and roughly a month thereafter development on Atlas (now known as Guardians of Atlas) was publicly cancelled.

Gamasutra has reached out to Artillery representatives for more details on the studio's closure. If you or someone you know was affected by this decision you can email Gamasutra to tell your story confidentially.