CCP’s Project Nova is no more, though the studio says the concept behind it will live on. The project was revealed a few years back, but the hubbub around it and now its 'cancellation' has CCP rethinking how it shares information on potential new releases with its community.
A spokesperson for EVE Online developer CCP said as much in a reply to a Reddit thread on Nova’s cancellation, explaining that the studio will likely stay quiet on projects in the early stage of development from here on out.
“We are moving away from publicly announcing our internal project codenames and will wait until we’re ready for a full reveal,” explains that CCP dev. “We want to show you rather than tell you how we have evolved this concept and we’re looking forward to doing so when the time comes to present this concept as a fully-fledged game.”
They also note that, internally, the cancellation of Nova is more of an evolution than anything, and something fellow developers will know is not an entirely unsurprising turn for a project in the early stages of development.
“We're continuing to develop our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, actively evolving it beyond the original scope for what was formerly codenamed Project Nova. […] This decision was taken because Project Nova’s gameplay experience as presented at EVE Vegas '18 would not have achieved our ambitious goals for this concept,” reads the post.
“Moreover, it is very common for games in active development to evolve over time, often substantially. We remain committed to offering a rock-solid, action-oriented gameplay experience with stellar visuals, but due to significant changes in the scope and direction of our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, it also made sense to update how we refer to this project internally. So, we are no longer using the codename Project Nova for this game concept.”
The Reykjavík-based team previously assigned to Project Nova remains at CCP, and has been dispersed to other projects, while development of that sci-fi multiplayer shooter concept will now be the primary focus of CCP’s London studio.