Killer Queen Black launched on the Nintendo Switch to decent reviews in 2018 with an average score of 83 on Metacritic. Sadly, the company behind the game Liquid Bit has published a letter on their website informing fans that the game will be shutting down on 30th November, 2022. The problem stems from the fact that Killer Queen Black was built on top of Amazon GameSparks which provides the backend functionality for the game and that has has since folded. The team spent a lot of money and time trying to migrate the action game to another provider, but that hasn’t been possible as they say that they would have to do “an almost complete rewrite of the game code” which the company just can not do and have profusely apologised to players for the situation. The only good news is that Liquid Bit are hoping to open source the game code, so it is not lost to history and they have managed to secure a “two-month extension from Amazon to use the service until November 30th so our league play could conclude uninterrupted.” You can read Liquid Bit’s CEO’s full message down below:
“Dear Killer Queen Black Players and Friends,
It’s with a heavy heart that we’re announcing that after three amazing years, KQB will be going offline on November 30’th, 2022.
This is not something that was planned or foreseen. KQB was built on top of Amazon GameSparks, the service that provides the backend functionality for our game. Unfortunately, Amazon decided to shut down this service on September 30’th. We moved mountains and spent a treasure to migrate to a different provider, but unfortunately, the task amounted to an almost complete rewrite of the game, and that’s just not in the cards for Liquid Bit at this time. We’re working on plans to open-source the game, and hopefully, with some luck and support, it will rise again in the future.
We know that this comes as a shock and disappointment to many of you that have spent so much time and energy playing our game and making the community the great place that it is. We can assure you that we are just as disappointed as you are.
Please know that we did everything possible to keep the online component alive – unfortunately, it was just out of our capability as an indie developer. We did, however, secure a two-month extension from Amazon to use the service until November 30th so our league play could conclude uninterrupted.
Liquid Bit is marching on, and we’re continuing to build out our new title, which we hope to share very soon. Rest assured, we will make sure issues of this nature are not able to thwart our production or shut down our future online games again.
It’s been a wild run and I am grateful for everyone’s support. Thank you. – Matt Tesch”
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