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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.


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

dawnpatch
I'm still gonna be playing PM with friends as it is so much fun! Good luck to the devs, their talent really showed in this project and i know it'll show in their future projects! Maybe this has to do with the smash direct this month cause maybe brawl will be released on VC or something.
 
E
To everyone who's saying Nintendo is behind this, stop and think for a moment. If the PMDT was issued an C&D (which they've said many times they have not) and signed a non-disclosure agreement (which they would not have to C&D orders do not work like that) then why would they just straight up lie about it? I mean come on, they've got a lawyer for crying out loud. They'd just say "we can't comment on the circumstances at the present time". There is zero reason to outright lie about any legal action if they had some. Even if they wanted to "protect Nintendo" lying about it would do the exact opposite because everyone would assume Nintendo forced them to lie. The reality of the situation is that the PMDT wants to commit fully to other things and they don't want to worry about potential legal action in the future.
 
Baby_Sneak
Da Man said:
Wow, I wanted PM to sorta die out eventually so everyone can finally move on to Smash 4 but not like this to be straight up honest. And I agree with the majority regarding the lies about our never-to-be PAL release, had to use a homebrewed wii and a NTSC disc to play the mod.

But as others said, had to happen eventually.
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I play smash 4 and have played project m in the past (3.5), and there is no character in smash 4 that can offer enough freedom to satisfy project m players. Just saying, and I'm glad you are at least honest in your thoughts as well as we are as a community with all the conspiracy theories lurking here.
The fact that there's no download links on the website absolutely disturbs me. If they were moving on, they would had absolutely left those in, which makes me high suspicious
 
TimeChain
Man, I remember PM when I first got it working for the 100th try on my Wii. (I didn't knew much about hacking and I still don't...) People were I would always get excited for the newest updates and trying out all the changes for every character. It was also around the time when I met friends that also loved Smash, so we would always play PM during the weekends. It's sad that when I started to lose interest in PM with Smash 4 around the corner, was also when PM started to lose its fame and it's really sad that the PM hype train had to stop so soon. I feel kinda guilty honestly for ignoring PM for so long in favor for other games in the series. With that said, I'm gonna try playing PM a little more often. After all, the game is not totally dead; the game still exists in my SD Card and there's still a massive community for PM. Plus, I need some work on my Melee skills.
 
R
Radical Larry said:
Instead of being pansies about it, guys (not PMDT, but anyone else), you know other people can take over development of Project M by any potential. Someone could even modify the mod on their own, slap a good amount of fixes to characters and new things and continue where the dev team left off.

...anyone feeling like the dev team should give us the coding for the entire game? It'd be rather nice for any games that could be spiritual successors to it.
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That would be AMAZING! :D
 
Meister Zeigler
Don't get why everyone's so upset, Melee hasn't been touched since it was released in 2001 and people are still playing that stale @$$ game without any gripe.
 
Baby_Sneak
GDNALK said:
I don't understand how the game no longer being updated, or having to get your copy from sources other than the original creator now is an automatic death for the game.

Melee is never going to be updated. You can't buy a copy of Melee directly from Nintendo anymore. Damn, I guess that, by everyone else's logic, means Melee is just as dead as Project M.

Yeah, this means no fix for Link's grab. No updated physics to get a headband Jigglypuff. We're not getting that new Snake taunt. We're not getting that new Zero Suit Samus work. So? There's plenty of stupid jank and ****ty costumes in Melee, SmUsh, USF4, and MKX, but they're not dead because of it.

Saying that Project M is dead because it's never going to be updated again and that it's slightly harder to get is asinine.

If Project M is dead just because of what's happened:
RIP Project M (That had bigger tourneys this year than ever before)
RIP Melee (That continues to grow despite its age and almost broke 2000 entrants at EVO 2015)
RIP UMvC3 (That is still fighting despite being tossed under the bus by Disney, with no future Vs. title in sight)
RIP Skullgirls (That will no longer be updated, even though the newest DLC characters are completely unbalanced, yet still draws in significant numbers in side-tourneys)
RIP KoF '97 (That had hundreds of thousands of people watch tournament streams, at one point have one stream break 500,000 simultaneous viewers)
RIP every game that the final version has come out for and will no longer receive updates and support from the publisher.

If the rest of the community wants to accept something like this as the end of the game, then I'm ashamed to say that I was ever a part of a group that would just let something so insignificant as the game being finished completely destroy what it loved.

"RIP Project M" - Community
Yeah?
I guess that means y'all have been bustas all along then, huh?

Keep on smashing.
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i want to put this as my signature
 
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ChromesmasherXx
Guys, Nintendo shut it down. Why did they take the links down "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." This shows they completed their work and they spent SIX YEARS. If you coded for six years you would keep your product available. Why would they quit distributing it because they were done with it. Nintendo doesn't update the wii anymore but they don't cut off everything on the website about it.
 
Z25
ChromesmasherXx said:
Guys, Nintendo shut it down. Why did they take the links down "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." This shows they completed their work and they spent SIX YEARS. If you coded for six years you would keep your product available. Why would they quit distributing it because they were done with it. Nintendo doesn't update the wii anymore but they don't cut off everything on the website about it.
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I doubt it's Nintendo, we know from that X treehouse employee that they don't care about it, and if they did it be shut down ages ago, something else seems to have led to this.
 
Keeshu
I just wanted to stop by and say that even though I do not play Project M, I will miss it. It was nice to see different takes on the smash characters, and some of the features they'd add to make different game modes and such. Have fun whoever still has Project M!
 
Keeshu
I just wanted to stop by and say that even though I do not play Project M, I will miss it. It was nice to see different takes on the smash characters, and some of the features they'd add to make different game modes and such. Have fun whoever still has Project M!
 
E
I feel I can actually play P:M now and never expect it to change.

All the effort and time I put into furthering something will not be wasted by another update which either ruins a move completely or slightly alters it in a way I have to relearn all over again.

Woohoo.
 
SuperSmashDrake
With this I think the community will still do a great deal with the game. As 3.6 will be the last version, custom content makers won't have to fear with their content becoming incompatible in the next version.

I enjoyed the game, but I think this was a good move. The Smash community needs to move on, and I feel like PM held us back. We as a community can't keep looking in the past. We need to support the current games, even though we may prefer Melee.

Overall, a big thank you to the PMDT. You guys did a great thing for the community and hopefully Nintendo will learn from what you did.
 
Kasran
SuperSmashDrake said:
I enjoyed the game, but I think this was a good move. The Smash community needs to move on, and I feel like PM held us back. We as a community can't keep looking in the past. We need to support the current games, even though we may prefer Melee.
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Project M is one of the current games, buddy. Don't talk like it's going anywhere anytime soon.
 
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Rman1228
Izayoi said:
Just checked the website and the only page available is that message-- meaning downloading from the official site itself doesn't work.
Good thing I downloaded it literally 3 days before this announcement.
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I literally came to the pm website to see if a new build came out. but honestly, we all don't have to be upset just because pm ceased development.
 
D
I have a theory as to what's going on here.

We all know that backporting a character from Sm4sh would be a huge no-no. The exPMDT knew that.
But what if they backported a character without knowing?
Isaac is one of the most requested characters for Sm4sh. What if he got in, but we won't be told untill the Smash Direct this month? It makes sense considering Isaac has been teased for a while. A Nintendo rep could easily catch wind of this, and bam. Project M is done.
 
Super4ng
Nedark said:
I have a theory as to what's going on here.

We all know that backporting a character from Sm4sh would be a huge no-no. The exPMDT knew that.
But what if they backported a character without knowing?
Isaac is one of the most requested characters for Sm4sh. What if he got in, but we won't be told untill the Smash Direct this month? It makes sense considering Isaac has been teased for a while. A Nintendo rep could easily catch wind of this, and bam. Project M is done.
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That makes no sense. Most the roster from brawl is in sm4sh but they didn't have to cut them out. The reason why they were developing lyn, knuckles, and Isaac was because their models and rights were already existent in brawl in the form of trophies. So really, the characters were already in the game, they just made them playable.
 
LeadRod
I would be more sad but honestly ... I'm more grateful than anything.

I really love Project M and seeing the game "finished" makes me incredibly sad. At the same time though this makes me appreciate how incredibly lucky we all were to not just have such an unbelievable project produced AS a competitive game but also that it was ... free. From a business standpoint of course this couldn't last forever and it's kind of incredible that it happened at all. This post has kind of opened my eyes to that.

Anyway, thank you PMDevTeam for an unbelievable ride and I wish you the absolute best of luck in the future.

Sincerely,
All of your Fans!
xoxo
 
dandeto
I had fun downloading it. Big thanks to the PMDev team! You brought smiles to me and my friends faces!

I would like to point out that if you built an extremely complex game, would you like a group of people hacking it, and making their own game? It can possibly detract money from Nintendo. Instead of buying sm4sh, you could switch from brawl to PM. PM might actually be more vast and techy anyway. Would you like some fans to add their own game to your series?

Everything the article says could be true, they might just not want to be sued. They might have just gotten a new lawyer and got told that their activity could be sued for.

I am not trying to make theories. My point is, we really don't know. As for me, I will believe what the PM team tells me.

I respect them and their hard work, from a programmers point of view. Thank you for all you have done PMDev!

Sincerely,
Dandeto
 
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RyXyu
Worst news for me today. Just want v4.0 for, why not, a new character who can refresh a lil'bit PM, but preferably to fix and buff someone.
PLEASE PMDT DON'T LEAVE THE PROJECT :(
 
Chazman2000
Wish i could/was playing Project M when they were working on it, because if i ever play it, then the hype for later updates is lost.
 
D
Super4ng said:
That makes no sense. Most the roster from brawl is in sm4sh but they didn't have to cut them out. The reason why they were developing lyn, knuckles, and Isaac was because their models and rights were already existent in brawl in the form of trophies. So really, the characters were already in the game, they just made them playable.
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I see. Yeah, you're right.
 
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