A staff announcement posted on the Project Spark forums stated that Microsoft and Team Dakota have decided to close down Project Spark.
Effective immediately, the game is no longer available to download on the Xbox Marketplace or Windows store. Online services for people who already purchased Project Spark will continue for the next three months. If those players want to save their favorite levels for the future, they need to download them locally. No online support means that there’s no way to download user-generated content or upload a creation to share.
The post makes it clear that Project Spark team members weren’t laid off, but instead relocated to other Microsoft Studios projects. Over the course of it’s lifetime, Project Spark released “46 content packs, thousands of assets and 16 updates since launch”, and they’re proud of that accomplishment.
Anyone who bought or redeemed the retail version of Project Spark after October 5th 2015 and before today, will receive a credit to their Microsoft account. The xbox website has a page set up dedicated to going over the specifics as to how that will work.
This news comes fresh after Lionhead Studios was shuttered, making it not entirely unexpected.
