Killer Queen Black to end service in November due to GameSparks shutdown

Developer Liquid Bit has announced that its 2019 multiplayer game Killer Queen Black will be ending service on November 30. CEO Matt Tesch put the blame on the recent shutdown of GameSparks.

"Please know that we did everything possible to keep the online component alive, " said Tesch. "Unfortunately, it was just out of our capability as an indie developer."

GameSparks was a third-party game dev platform purchased by Amazon in 2018, and was used as the backend for several multiplayer games, including Catan. When it was terminated at the end of September, the games affected (and which were unable to a different service) lost their online functionality. 

Tesch further explained that Liquid Bit "spent a treasure" to migrate Killer Queen Black over to a different provider. But doing that would've required an entire rewrite of the game, something he said was "just not in the cards for Liquid Bit at this time." 

In the end, Liquid Bit managed to get an extra two months to keep the game alive. However, he added that plans are being made to open source Killer Queen Black at a later date so that "it will rise again in the future."