Project M Ceases Development: v3.6 To Be Final Release

We report this news to you today with a heavy heart. As announced on the official Project M website, development for the game has been finished. Project M v3.6 will be the last release of Project M. Here is the official statement from the development team.

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Hello friends,

Six years ago, we started a journey born out of our shared love for competitive fighting games. Eventually, the electrifying passion that coursed through us arced out and drew in more people until our small circle of friends grew into a team, and that team grew into an international community. Project M and its community have grown larger than any of us ever anticipated, and it’s truly heartwarming to see all of the unforgettable connections and friendships that have been forged through this project.

Unfortunately, we’re here to say that we’re at the end of that road.

We’ve learned so much in the process of making Project M—accumulating life-changing lessons in communication, team work, professionalism, work ethic, and more—but there’s only so far we can take those skills in a volunteer project. With this in mind, we’ve made a difficult business decision: We’re ready to finish development here and move on to bigger and better ventures.

We realize that this will come as a shock to many of our fans. Please, forgive us. Again, it’s been an excruciating call to make, but it’s been made a bit easier by our satisfaction with the previous and final release, v3.6. We’ve spent six years polishing Project M, and rather than let it drag on through another several years of dwindling development and change-fatigue in the competitive circle, we’re going to consider our work complete.

In the mean time, we plan to be hard at work on new projects, built from the ground up. We can’t spill the beans just yet, but know that we’re looking towards a fresh start with brand new designs. Rather than splitting our focus, many of us want to dedicate ourselves to this new venture fully. In this way, we hope to maintain the level of quality and professionalism you’ve come to expect from us.

In summary, we are ceasing development of Project M (effective immediately) and will be making no further releases as we turn our attention towards an entirely new venture. As the PMDev team will be formally disbanded, please forward all official communications regarding Project M to video game attorney and business consultant Ryan Morrison. We appreciate your support and your understanding.

One final time,

PMDev

Thank you for playing!

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What does this mean for the future of Project M at tournaments? What exciting project could the Project M team be up to next? Let us know in the comments below and share your favorite memories from the game's various releases. From Demo 1.0 to v3.6 it has been an incredible ride and we at Smashboards wish the Project M Development Team the best of luck in all future adventures.

Writer's Note: Hey guys, SmashCapps here. I know this has some folks sad and shaken up but I wanted to make sure everyone knows that Project M no longer being updated was not because a cease and desist.

To clarify: We weren't contacted, issued a C&D, threatened or had legal action taken against us in any way, but we want it to stay that way.

— Ryan Morrison (@Morrison) December 2, 2015

Hope that clears things up! Thanks for reading as always everyone!

 

Still keeping PM as my main game no matter what. RIP PM it was a good run.

 

Reasons that hint to this being a C&D:

• The quiet responses to those "punished" for using Project M
• The fact that the recent post has all questions directed to the lawyer
• The downloads to their site being removed
• The members of the team saying it isn't a C&D, but not going into detail
• No exact answer as to why this was closed
• The recent reveal of PM Art Tuesday two weeks ago shows the team was thriving with work, but something must have recently happened
• Legally restricted to say the actual reason of closing the game's development, or at least refuse to directly share what is going on behind the scenes

It'll be hard to move on from this magnificent piece of a game. I had so much great times with it, and it really helped me out with my skills crossing over to Melee. I hope that one day, Nintendo looks at this event as a grave mistake on their part. I literally bought three copies just to spread the word of Project M, and help support both my favorite company, and my favorite developers.

Today was a bad day. Best of luck to the team. They're so talented.

What people don't realize is that the competitve, more hardcore Smash Bros. fans are the smallest demographic of the franchise, which makes sense because it contains so many recognizable IPs.

That doesn't mean Nintendo is ignoring that demographic, however. Nintendo has been endorsing Melee, Brawl, and Sm4sh at tournaments. That's a big improvement from requesting for Melee to not appear.

It's also important to realize how carefully crafted each true installment of Super Smash Bros. is made, as Sakurai specifically seeks out the original creators of the IPs as supervisors to make sure he isn't misresperesenting the characters they created. The PMDev team completely ommits this consideration for obvious reasons.

As saddening and disappointing it is, I know for a fact that PM was C&D'd a week or two ago, and are only coming out about this now. They have not verified what company did this, be it Nintendo or another company involved with Brawl's developement (Game Freak, Sega, Konami, etc.)

 

Bummer. Just a bummer. Everyone better keep their 3.6 downloads safe. Every Smash fan should have their hands on this project. Pretty sure I'm not the only one who favors it. We can't let it die.

 

Well, thank you, PMDT. You made easily the best mod in video-game history. Thank you for hard work & dedication. R.I.P.

 

Oh, did Nintendo go through with Iwata's idea of buying Project Melee to support the obviously huge fan base?

Awesome. Sorry you guys have to deal with the backlash in the interim before they announce everything.

 

You know, as sad as this all is, it just goes to show how great of a community we have here. While understandably upset, everyone is still hopeful and sticking together. Thank you PMDT for making something so beautiful that brought us all together.

 

Thank you PMDT for doing your best, I wish the luck in you all!!
(I still think 3.5 is the best. lol)

 

While what you are saying may be true that does not make Nintendo some infallible being that is exempt from criticism.

The circumstances surrounding this almost certainly scream "Nintendo legal action!" and if this is indeed the case then they have serious backlash facing them. Also if we used your logic, every time a developer ****ed up we'd all just say "We can't criticize because without them we wouldn't even have a game" and the developers could just do whatever they want without anybody questioning it. If Nintendo was indeed involved then this is a monumental **** up on their part that will only serve to further damage their relationship with the Smash community.

People are acting like Nintendo is the enemy of Smash, and I've even seen some people claim that the Smash community would be better off if Nintendo didn't exist [blatantly inaccurate].

My point is that as much as people may want to be angry at Nintendo, the mod is still free to be played and distributed by people who own it - at the end of the day, we still have a perfectly functioning game that's a great deal of fun to play, and while we could have more, we could have a lot, lot less.

It may not be perfect, and for some it may be extremely disappointing [I was hoping a PM 4.0 would fix Link's grab, myself], but pretending Nintendo is only a bad guy or in the way of PM is clearly fallacious. I think there's a difference between being upset with the action Nintendo took and thinking that Nintendo is evil or whatever, and while I fully respect one idea, I can only sigh and shake my head at the other. That's where my comment was coming from.

 

They hopefully got scooped, Ninty need Smash NX fast, and it needs to be better (seriously, last direct after 1 year, that's less lifespan than DoA5...) PMDT have made a game with 6 years life, Ninty have to be paying attention.

 

While what you are saying may be true that does not make Nintendo some infallible being that is exempt from criticism.

The circumstances surrounding this almost certainly scream "Nintendo legal action!" and if this is indeed the case then they have serious backlash facing them. Also if we used your logic, every time a developer ****ed up we'd all just say "We can't criticize because without them we wouldn't even have a game" and the developers could just do whatever they want without anybody questioning it. If Nintendo was indeed involved then this is a monumental **** up on their part that will only serve to further damage their relationship with the Smash community.

Depends who messed up here or what happened.

They stopped, it's all we know for sure.

 

Ya, this doesn't mean the game is dead. We will always have 3.6 and I along with all of my crew will continue playing it. People will probably leave, but a loyal fanbase can still be maintained for this game. It was such a great creation and something that cannot and will not be replaced.

As for Smash 4, I didn't even think people *played* with garbage anymore. Isn't this the 21st century? Poverty shouldn't be that bad still. Come on, Obama.

 

I'm convinced that they were forced to take it down legally. It's too abrupt, they removed the download links and all info from the site, and they said all official inquiries about Project M should go to their video game attorney and business consultant. If they were just deciding to move on to new projects and leave Project M where they were happy with it, they would have left the download links up without a doubt.

I'm very sad.

It will be nice to see the meta game for PM develop now though.

 

People are acting like Nintendo is the enemy of Smash, and I've even seen some people claim that the Smash community would be better off if Nintendo didn't exist [blatantly inaccurate].

My point is that as much as people may want to be angry at Nintendo, the mod is still free to be played and distributed by people who own it - at the end of the day, we still have a perfectly functioning game that's a great deal of fun to play, and while we could have more, we could have a lot, lot less.

It may not be perfect, and for some it may be extremely disappointing [I was hoping a PM 4.0 would fix Link's grab, myself], but pretending Nintendo is only a bad guy or in the way of PM is clearly fallacious. I think there's a difference between being upset with the action Nintendo took and thinking that Nintendo is evil or whatever, and while I fully respect one idea, I can only sigh and shake my head at the other. That's where my comment was coming from.

I don't think anyone here thinks Nintendo is evil or actively malicious. I am however of the opinion that they aren't very bright with regards to being in touch with their fanbase. You certainly remember the legal action that Nintendo tried to take against Melee at EVO 2013 and the backlash that resulted. Shutting down PM will ultimately do more harm than good for Nintendo as their relationship with the Smash community (At least the Melee and PM portions) was already hanging by a thread.

 

Depends who messed up here or what happened.

They stopped, it's all we know for sure.

Unfortunately the takedown was too abrupt and too suspect for this to be a simple "End of the road" as it were.

From their Twitter feed we can see that they were hard at work developing more alt costumes as well as the Knuckles and Lyn PSA that came out quite some time ago, so they weren't anywhere near being done with everything. Additionally all download links were removed from the website, it's very unlikely that anything other than legal action from Nintendo would provoke this kind of reaction.

This is very much a case of we know but we don't "know".

 

Unfortunately the takedown was too abrupt and too suspect for this to be a simple "End of the road" as it were.

From their Twitter feed we can see that they were hard at work developing more alt costumes as well as the Knuckles and Lyn PSA that came out quite some time ago, so they weren't anywhere near being done with everything. Additionally all download links were removed from the website, it's very unlikely that anything other than legal action from Nintendo would provoke this kind of reaction.

This is very much a case of we know but we don't "know".

They were in development and then they stopped, that is it for what we know.

I'm not gonna give answers to what I think happened, more or less just that it is over and we go forward with what we can from here.

 

There's no reason for negativity. I'm surprised that with everything shaking in Nintendo that it's still happening this year, but everything will be okay! Promise.

 

So what happened with the new costumes that were revealed the other day? Couldn't they just add those in before leaving?

Damn this has to have been pretty rough for them

Side note: I had just made myself a profile here in smashboards today just so I can join in on PM stuff. This isn't what I wanted to see...

We welcome you with open arms. We've been through tough times before, we'll make it through this.

 

aaaaaaaaaa

 

Maybe it has something to do with the Smash 4 dedicated direct coming soon?

 

"I'M NOT CRYING! I JUST... CAUGHT SOMETHING IN MY EYE!"

"what did you catch?"

"TEARS!!!"

 

as long as you all remember that PM only dies when we as a community put down the controller and forget it ever existed, we're gonna be alright.

it's a hard pill to swallow but it isn't the end.

 

Why would Nintendo go backwards with the relationship with the Smash community? No logic at all... Also why would the PMDT lie about it not being a C&D? It all feels shady and I know it just happened today, but I feel like we would've heard something by now.

You do realize that this is the same company that tried to get Melee blocked at EVO 2013 for no good reason other than "We're not making money off of it" right? I wouldn't put it past them to pull something this underhanded.

Why would the PMDT not disclose any details? Do you know what a Non-Disclosure Agreement is? They are very likely under one and are not allowed to give specific details as to what is going on.

 

Why would Nintendo go backwards with the relationship with the Smash community? No logic at all... Also why would the PMDT lie about it not being a C&D? It all feels shady and I know it just happened today, but I feel like we would've heard something by now.

Well some people would say,

Some people in here are saying this with Nintendo wanting it removed is what people are implying here.

Others would say it is to protect their IP which is why some old Twitter posts were removed because Nintendo can't be associated directly with PM.

More or less devil's advocate here.

 

makes some things less complicated. wasn't gonna go far

 

This is truly a shame. I may not have played Project M very much, but it was easily one of the best smash games out there with tons of characters and costumes. I really hope Nintendo wasn't involved with this, because if they were, its not going to end well. I honestly hope all these devs get hired by Nintendo and make new smash bros games.

 

what is gonna be really insulting is if during the smash focused nintendo direct, nintendo mentions they are releasing "new original gameplay modes, costumes, and other great features" as DLC, and said DLC is essentially everything they've seized from the P:M team. From a melee gameplay mode, turbo mode, and character changes/taunts straight from PM in these "special modes"

Not gonna lie, I'd love to have a lot of those alternate costumes in Smash 4

 

People are acting like Nintendo is the enemy of Smash, and I've even seen some people claim that the Smash community would be better off if Nintendo didn't exist [blatantly inaccurate].

My point is that as much as people may want to be angry at Nintendo, the mod is still free to be played and distributed by people who own it - at the end of the day, we still have a perfectly functioning game that's a great deal of fun to play, and while we could have more, we could have a lot, lot less.

It may not be perfect, and for some it may be extremely disappointing [I was hoping a PM 4.0 would fix Link's grab, myself], but pretending Nintendo is only a bad guy or in the way of PM is clearly fallacious. I think there's a difference between being upset with the action Nintendo took and thinking that Nintendo is evil or whatever, and while I fully respect one idea, I can only sigh and shake my head at the other. That's where my comment was coming from.

Lala land.

Meanwhile in reality: Evo 2013. Trying to shut down melee's stream. Shutting down brawls stream too that one time. And at evo they didnt just try to end melees stream, they wanted to end the whole smash bros event.

Now the c&d which I knew would lead to PM's demise sooner or later. Nintendo does not give a **** about its consumers customers and fans, for whatever reason I will never understand.

 

Lala land.

Meanwhile in reality: Evo 2013. Trying to shut down melee's stream.

A horror story. But only concerning less than 24 hours of events and very likely a Nintendo rep losing his job. Every smash related piece of news post Evo 2013 was nothing but promising reversal and dedication to the community. Or do sponsorships, gamecube adapters, and over a year's worth of continued updates mean nothing?

The evidence and answers we do have seem pretty incriminating for Nintendo, but we also can't pretend we weren't running full speed for this ending for the last few years. I don't like it, but I have been preparing for this type of news for at least a year. It hurts, but I'm going to wait for more statements from actual members of the dev team.

 

Nothing of value was lost.

And to throw out agreement with TheGoat and others who want to point it out - Nintendo cares about nothing aside from the bottom line. Who's the company most anal about streaming and uploading content relevant to their games, even though it's literally free advertising? Who's the company who keeps coming up with halfassed "upload to Youtube" features that restrict what's seen of the gameplay and automatically add advertisements to the videos? Nintendo wants to be hip and cool, and play in this world of social media and real gamer culture, but they want it their way or no way.

With that logic, either PM was C&D, or we're going to see a strangely PM-esque update to Sm4sh (acquired for free, of course!), and I certainly hope it's the former, since PM is one form of cancer I would prefer Nintendo to not try to absorb.

 

The evidence and answers we do have seem pretty incriminating for Nintendo, but we also can't pretend we weren't running full speed for this ending for the last few years. I don't like it, but I have been preparing for this type of news for at least a year. It hurts, but I'm going to wait for more statements from actual members of the dev team.

Honestly, I'm with the group that says this was likely because their lawyer advised them to take it down to save Project Wavedash; since an attachment to a previously infringing work can be connected with their current works. If Nintendo had issued a C&D, the most they could possibly do was MAYBE ask them to not talk about it (C&D's don't really do that, but they might have tried to strongarm some silence), but we've been explicitly been told it wasn't a C&D... Which there's no real way to force someone to lie about that. The Project M team gains nothing by lying about the C&D if true.

The other possibility is that they did get hired by a company, and they needed to take the old work down to qualify, but they can't talk about it because of an NDA.

I suppose the third possibility is that their lawyer is just awful at his job and told them to lie eventhough a C&D should only contain a requirement to cease distributing, not specifically say it wasn't a C&D. I wouldn't put any money on that bet though. It'd be a bit silly to hire an IP lawyer for your new venture only to have that lawyer destroy your work for no reason.

 

The Project M team gains nothing by lying about the C&D if true.

It could be that they didn't want fans to blame Nintendo. PMDT are generally made up of, unsurprisingly, fans of Nintendo and Smash. But yes, I am intrigued by the Project Wavedash angle that people are bringing up. I just don't know much about that project to begin with. And well, I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories and cover-up stories.

 

Guys they WERE forced to take it down, but not by Nintendo. It was Wavedash. There is a widespread coverup effort on Reddit right now; any mention of this on /r/SSPM or /r/Smashbros gets nuked immediately with no explanation. Try it if you don't believe.

Ironically the same thing happened to your thread; I just thought that was funny. Also don't leech images from 4chan, it'll end up deleting itself soon - imgur is there for you.

 

Why would Nintendo go backwards with the relationship with the Smash community? No logic at all... Also why would the PMDT lie about it not being a C&D? It all feels shady and I know it just happened today, but I feel like we would've heard something by now.

Totally agreed. Everything here has no clear answer, and I'm pretty sure the entire community really dislikes that.

 

Thanks so much for all your hard work, Project M devs.

Now that development has concluded...

Will you please publish your code list?

And perhaps grant permission to other mods (like Brawl Minus) to use some codes?

 

Nothing of value was lost.

The second part of that "either" statement was pretty silly.

As far as PM is concerned, I don't see it really hurting anyone and it's been beaten to the ground enough as is, so I'm very curious as to why people are still butthurt about its existence.
Some things about Smash 4 have me miffed, like the unpolished hitboxes and poor distribution of knockback/hitstun (although Melee and PM have their share of problems as well), but I don't really mind that anyone wants to talk about it or play it since there is definitely something to be appreciated within it.

I think it's funny that people try to diss PM for trying to hard to be like Melee when I've had countless experiences with casuals and competitive players alike that will actually defend this game more than Melee because it at least tried to make the difficult aspects of Melee more "deliberate" and accessible, not to mention the fact that it has a lot more variety in character representation due to them actually attempting to make everyone effective in their own right.

And you're right to an extent -- nothing of value was lost; I still have my PM data and so do many others.
Even though the team did have more to add, it's nice to see all the effort that was put into making this and I hope the devs will be able to be part of bigger and better projects in the future.

 

Gonna post this once and make it clear:
Project M isn't dead.

So long as my heart beats,
my brain still pumps blood,
and 20XX doesn't claim my hands
I will play and enjoy and watch and love Project M
And because of that it won't die.

I hope a few of you who really do that join me. Maybe we can get in a few matches even.

I plan on playing Project M, like Smash 64, Melee, and maybe even Smash 4, until I die.

And I plan on passing it down along with all the other games I consider masterpieces on to the next generation. That way, the next generation can enjoy the great games (and shows, film, animation, music, visual art, and written art) of the past for the ages to come. And the next generation will know and love and enjoy Project M.

In the meantime, I look forward to what the PMDT (aka "Wavedash Games") does in the future, the future of unofficial PM modding (outfit mods, music mods, unofficial character additions, and maybe even a "version select" for characters including possibly all versions of Melee for Melee characters in PM?), and how PM grows in the post-patching world like 64, Melee, and Brawl did.

I really wanna see this meta take off and PM specialists show how far they can take this wonderful game, so that way, the purple Smash Bros. game can truly take off!!!

(Also, while I'm on it, I can't wait to see Project M inspire future mods of all Smash games of all sorts; I would love to see more 64, Melee, Brawl, and Smash 4 mods of 1/10th PM's quality and hopefully some even roughly as good as PM is!)

 

The second part of that "either" statement was pretty silly.

You must have misunderstood. If it's either Nintendo's way or no way, then PM is kill, or PM is under Nintendo's control. Simple, right?

 

It could be that they didn't want fans to blame Nintendo. PMDT are generally made up of, unsurprisingly, fans of Nintendo and Smash. But yes, I am intrigued by the Project Wavedash angle that people are bringing up. I just don't know much about that project to begin with. And well, I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories and cover-up stories.

Well, to be perfectly honest, assuming it was a Nintendo C&D is just as much of a conspiracy theory, it's just one that has a lot of supporters because the possibility has been looming for forever. The truth of the fact is, we have almost no information: the devs aren't talking, Nintendo isn't likely to issue a statement either if they were involved or not, and all we know is from a short letter and a link to a lawyer's email.

The reason I err on the side that it's probably not a C&D is just simply because people will generally tell you if it's a C&D. If Project M wanted to protect Nintendo's image while being shut down, there's a lot more clear cut ways they could've done it. It's a very unusual thing for someone to claim they didn't have a C&D when they did since you can't be shut up about them, and it's usually a good out to avoid personal backlash. I can't really think of a situation where someone's done specifically this.

So, yeah. This somewhat reeks of something else corporate, which basically narrows it down to the ass cover for the new project or some form of NDA (which would mean they're currently working with someone that doesn't want to talk). I suppose one other possibility is that they mean Nintendo didn't give a C&D, and it could've been one of the other companies represented in Brawl, but I somewhat doubt Konami, Sega, or the like cares as much about a Brawl mod as it doesn't weaken their legal standing in IP battles like it does for Nintendo.

 

@Immortal i cant reply or like your comment

What is this
Is this truth

 

@Immortal i cant reply or like your comment

What is this
Is this truth

Their comment was taken down. They linked an image that's getting taken down left and right about the "truth" of it. There probably is some kernel of truth to the quote linked, but it's likely not from a legitimate source.