Microsoft and developer Team Dakota are effectively shutting down Project Spark as it will no longer be available for download via the Xbox Store or its Windows counterpart today, May 13th.
Online services will still be supported until August 12th. This means players will still be able to download and upload user-generated content.
“This was an extremely difficult decision for our team that we do not take lightly,” Team Dakota community manager Thomas Gratz said in a statement. “When Project Spark transitioned away from active development last fall, many of our team members moved to other projects within Microsoft Studios. While this means there have been no layoffs at Microsoft, it also means it’s simply no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping Project Spark up and running with meaningful updates and bug fixes, so we have come to this hard decision.”
Microsoft will offer Xbox or Windows Store credits to players who purchased a retail copy of the game. Nothing has been said about the downloaded copies.
Announced back in 2013, Project Spark was Microsoft’s answer to the Play Create Share games trend start by PlayStation’s LittleBigPlan. Project Spark was a more robust, ambitious take on the create/share aspect of it.
Source: Polygon