Gangs of Space was our child and became the prison of our hopes. Gangs of Space was a stroke of madness that arrived one day, or maybe a night, in Tokyo in the middle of an amusement arcade full of Shmup classics! Gangs of Space it was quite an adventure!

You have understood, it is with great regret that we announce today the upcoming closure of Gangs of Space.

• November 30, 2018: commercial closure (end of the sale of the DLC).
• May 31, 2019: official servers and support closed.

And after ? Total blackout? We will see, but we can not guarantee anything and in any case, it will be outside of Steam.


Maybe one day Erhune will have the courage to do a long post-mortem on the dev and the reasons for the end of Gangs of Space, but by then we will try to give you the main reasons:

• No money! After all these years of work on Gangs of Space, the launch in Early Access and the reception of tens of thousands of players, we have never been able to pay us, not even a beer or a restaurant … nothing at all! We had made the choice to reinvest everything to self-finance the dev of the game (software, assets, hosting / server, freelance, administration, etc …). How did we manage to stay that long without going crazy? Maybe we already were ?!
• No founding! But as it was not enough, we tried to find investors to finish GoS in V1, but even with a well advanced game and 70,000 players it was too risky for them.
• No communication! It’s simple, in 2018 (and also in 2017), to talk about your game in the media, the norm is that you have to pay or that everyone is already talking about you … Totally despairing when you still want to make “different” games that nobody wants to finance.

No more energy! In the end, all this consumed our ultimate energy reserves. We will have tried many things (probably not as good as those who will give us advice) but now it was time to move on.


Because we do not want to sell a service that you do not really have time to use at your convenience, we prefer to close the purchase of DLC after this announcement.

This allows us to provide another 6 months of service for the last irreducible who would still like to enjoy a DLC Gangs of Space.

And we promise you, this time “the money of subscribers” who will take a DLC will only serve one thing: to pay us a beer and a good restaurant!


After all these years we met many people without whom this project could not have gone so far and we wish to thank:b

• First of all, thank you to the family! These relatives who have supported us all these years without understanding our determination to finish GoS. With them no judgment, no advice, but listening, love, and the good dishes of our mothers who comfort so much in times of doubt.
• Right after, there is YOU, you the 70,000 players! From a few minutes to a few years, you played and participated with determination! Your feedback has been decisive in the evolution of the game. To have made a game that will have you passionate, amused, relaxed, raging, will be our greatest pride forever. Thank you 70,000 times!
  • And thanks to those active members of the community who are especially involved at all levels, wiki, moderation, community pillars, passionate evening streamers, etc … (no names for no jealous, but you will recognize ;-D)
• -oTo-, our composer who has held all these years and whose work we loved.
• Thanks to Aganon, Skywilly, Bestio and Seldell, from the websites Jeuxonline[www.jeuxonline.info], Game Side Story[www.gamesidestory.com] et Indiemag[www.indiemag.fr]. If the journalists and the Streamers were all like them, there is no doubt that you will not play at all the same way and many creators would have a greater chance to live from their work and offer you original games!
• Thanks to the creators of Unity, the transition from Flash to this software has really changed our life and allowed a gigantic qualitative leap for GoS.
• And finally thank you to all the devs, friends, some streamers, visitors on a show, star (like Richard Garriot or Zun) who have some day participated in their advice, their help, to make Gangs of Space.

The closing of an MMO is always a special moment, it is the opportunity for the old players to nostalgically recall their best memories. For the occasion, two “Golden Books” are open on our official forum where you are invited to come and tell what GoS was for you, your memories, your anecdotes, even a screenshot?

• Guestbook Gangs of Space [english][forum.gangsofspace.com]
• Guestbook Gangs of Space [french][forum.gangsofspace.com]

Why is the game not open source?

• This is a good question and we have studied the possibility but it is a big job. There are more legal reasons because we would not have the right to open some code blocks. In short, it is very complex.

Why was the game not sold? Users have value no?

• An MMO that is not finished is very complicated to sell, it’s not like a solo game. It will be necessary to put hands in the code, take care of the servers, etc. So unless you have a huge community or a big marketing buzz around the project, nobody wants to get wet.

All hope is lost forever?

• It is almost certain that neither Erhune nor Grouroux will ever work on Gangs of Space again. On the other hand if one day a serious team wishes to work on Gangs of Space and shows us that it has the capacity, one will study it with the greatest care.

With the start of the Sixo Vaporis galaxy, we have added 8 new skins. All these skins are linked to special codes that you can activate in your account management area[www.gangsofspace.com]. The Skin code hunt is open!


These two skins are a tribute to Ultima Online[uo.com] and two of its creators: Richard Garriott and Starr Long. They refer to the two characters they incarnated: Lord British and Lord Blackthorn. So if you meet one of these ships, maybe you have the chance to meet a legend (Richard Garriott[richardgarriott.com] is also an astronaut)!
How to get this skin: No idea, but they have codes and can do what they want ;-)


Drifting Lands is a SHMUP Hack’n Slash graphically superb and with very interesting game mechanics (the auto-warp is inspired by one of their system). And to make this skin, Alkemi Games has agreed to share with us the sources of the Marauder with which we made an original “module”!
How to get this skin: I have heard that there will be code available in the Steam forums of the game…


monsieursapin is a very nice french Streamer who loves to discover games in all styles to his joyful community. It was very fun to make this skin “sapin” which was also the name of the first enemies that we had in the first prototype of Gangs of Space!
How to get this skin: Watch it live on his channel https://www.twitch.tv/monsieursapin


Bestio is THE streamer of Shmup in France. Big fan of bullets and Hack’n Slash, he fell very early on Gangs of Space and followed us all these years. This skin is like a big thank you to him for his passion of games!
How to get this skin: Watch it live on his channel https://www.twitch.tv/bestiyo


Indiemag[www.indiemag.fr] is a french website devoted to independent games. He has always followed the evolution of Gangs of Space. Seldell, one of the creators of the site, is a fervent defender of independent games for years.
How to get this skin: By going to see this page[www.indiemag.fr] maybe


GameSideStory[www.gamesidestory.com] is the indie press of the video games. For years they have been talking about it with passion and without pressure. This crazy team has already tested over 2013 games, so that they all have a chance to exist. And that, it deserves a special skin!
How to get this skin: You need to work on GSS editing, ask Skywilly!


The Binding of Isaac by Edmund McMillen is one of our cult games that has greatly influenced the latest version of Gangs of Space. But all the work of McMillen is incredible and we wanted to pay tribute to him with this very weird skin.
How to get this skin: no idea, no answer from him for now. :’(


Log in to your account management[www.gangsofspace.com] and enter the code at this location:

Gangs of Space has been designed from the beginning to be a permadeath game (even before we introduced the “roguelite” elements like subsystems; our inspiration is taken mostly from old arcade games).

Even though we - and many players - like it this way, it is true that losing a ship can be a demoralizing experience for a new player. So today, we’re introducing a permadeath protection designed to help beginners without changing the fundamental high-level game for experienced players.

From now on, newly built ships will be equipped by default with a new passive item: the Auto-Warp. This item warps you back automatically to the Motherbase when you would have taken a fatal hit, but it comes with a few drawbacks:

• since it is a passive item, you cannot equip another item that would have given you nice passive bonuses;
• it lowers all Sector Points (SP) and Credit gains by 25%;
• it prevents you from warping to T5 or T6 systems.

You can remove this item at any time (and we encourage experienced players to do so!), but it will be destroyed in the process.


To add some visual variety, all ships are now created randomly with one out of 3 base colors.

Of course you can still customize your ship at any time (for free) in the Skin Shop.


Alex, the composer of the soundtrack of Gangs of Space, has been touched by all your positive feedback about his compositions. So he has graced us with 10 more tracks, which triples the amount of music we now have in the game!

You can discover these new tracks everywhere, from an alternative Motherbase ambiance to different music for all 6 tiers, and even some music on the death screen! (another good reason to un-equip your Auto-Warp!)


As usual, all the details of the patch are available in the changelog[forum.gangsofspace.com].


Thanks to a growing team of motivated players[wiki.gangsofspace.com], the Gangs of Space Wiki is now full of useful information:

https://wiki.gangsofspace.com/

Items, ships, subsystems, drops, enemies… all there, ready for your eyes!

There is still a lot of translation work though, so if you speak another language like Spanish, Russian, Chinese, German, Portuguese… then join the Wiki team on Discord! You will be more than welcome!


The Empire has started the construction of a new Motherbase in Cinquo Vaporis Galaxy. Enemy forces have been evaluted to about 17,000,000. Get ready for the cleaning, and maybe the Empire will reward the most valorous of you!


Shark Investor Pack
The Imperial Bank has computed dividends for the conquest of Quatro Vaporis Galaxy. Each Share will be awarded dividends of 168 Credits, for a total of 8,400 Credits for the 50 Shares of the Shark Investor Pack.

Ladders
Congratulations to all players that exterminated the Pirnat faction in 1 week, 12 hours, 18 minutes, and 7 seconds.

The players and Gangs that will receive Imperial awards for this Conquest are:
[forum.gangsofspace.com]Souvenir
A last glimpse of Quatro Vaporis Galaxy accompanied by a group picture of the winning Gang:

[forum.gangsofspace.com][forum.gangsofspace.com]

Galaxy Tertio Vaporis has been conquered in 10 days, 11 hours, 1 minute et 6 seconds!

On the ladder side:

• DJOKKATAJA wins the TOP GRIND[www.gangsofspace.com] with a very impressive score of 1,174,894 SP. A new record! But Zed is just behind… on purpose, maybe?
• Because on the TOP SKILL[www.gangsofspace.com] side, Zed improves his previous best score, and reaches almost 33K SP/h! Jhirin and kragnir beat their previous records too, but it wasn’t enough this time.
• On the TOP GANG[www.gangsofspace.com], 8-bit Warriors get their first victory, pushed by their leader and their very active members. They almost reach the previous record set by Meta in the previous Galaxy!

During this Conquest, we have banned 15 accounts for cheating. We remind everyone that modifying the game client or the game memory is forbidden by our Terms of Service. It is a question of common sense: let’s keep a pleasant environment for everyone to play and compete in!

The http://wiki.gangsofspace.com grows bigger and bigger, with new info coming every day, and translations in French and Russian starting to pop in. If you can write decent Chinese, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, or any other language spoken by a part of the Gangs of Space community, why not contribute to the effort?

On the Steam side, we celebrate today our 1 month release anniversary! With 10 versions published during this period, almost one every 3 days! On your side, you’ve left 216 evaluations, 78% positive. Thanks a lot!


We are pushing a lot of small updates these days, of course to fix problems that have been reported to you, but also to improve the way we convey information in the game. We’re very happy to see that the community has stepped in to help newbies understand the game better, but we need to do our part, and make the game more easily understood!

We have also worked a ton on “invisible” tasks in the background, including server optimization. If you haven’t tried v0.31.8, you’ll be surprised by how much pleasant the game is to play without all these pesky server lags that plagued us since the release!

Today, along with the new Conquest we are releasing v0.31.9 that revamps the ingame ladder interface, and a lot of quality-of-life improvements. Check out all the details in the changelog[forum.gangsofspace.com]!


How many dividends will our Shark Investors earn for the conquest of Tertio Vaporis?

The latest data from the Imperial Bank shows that each Share will receive a dividend of 312 Credits, which means 15,600 Credits for the 50 Shares of the Pack Shark Investor.


Thanks to kragnir for remembering to take a end-of-galaxy souvenir picture, since we couldn’t be there on time to take one. Bye bye Tertio Vaporis!

[forum.gangsofspace.com]