We earlier covered a news where the situation was looking much better for Gas Powered Games after their recent video where Chris Taylor expressed doubt whether or not to cancel the Kickstarter.

However, some staff has been laid off and they are pretty relieved because their future is not uncertain anymore. They can also be rehired if the Kickstarter turns out to be successful, because that would give the company enough funds to pay them.

“I think it was also a huge relief for many, and they’re happy to know what’s ahead of them,” Taylor said. “They can keep an eye on the Kickstarter campaign at the same time as they are sending out their resumes.”

“And they’ve got money in their pocket. A big part of this decision was because of other big developers closing down, people finding out on payday that there’s no money, that the company is broke. Everyone at [Gas Powered Games] knew that I would never do that. In all of the 15 years I’ve run the company I’ve never missed a payroll, and let me tell you, that’s saying something.”

You can pledge for their project on Kickstarter, and it’s still a long way to go before it hits the targeted $1.1 million funding. Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Gas Powered Games chief Chris Taylor has mentioned that situation is looking much better for their Kickstarter and he has seen sudden surges in funding after that video where he was thinking of closing down the project to not make more losses and save the team.

“I don’t want to make any assumptions at this point, but things look much better, and I think it’s still going to be a long road ahead, but we’re prepared to work very hard to make this happen,” he told Polygon.

“I’m already making phone calls and setting up meetings to talk to key people about coming back, to see the campaign through. At least now, everyone has their eyes wide open, no surprises.”

He has also revealed that it’s now about saving the company and make a game second. The Kickstarter has garnered $280k in funding but there’s still a lot of way to go to reach the $1.1 million goal.

“It never occurred to me that the industry would rally like it did, and that people would then invest, not only in Wildman, but in helping me to save GPG and the team (in fact, it’s probably the other way around, and I think the Kickstarter has become about saving a company and the game is a distant second).”

Via VG247.

Microsoft has stopped the updates for Age of Empires Online because they’re too costly. Remember the days when the series was revered among many? What happened that people have lost interest in these games? Maybe it is because of Age of Empires 3 and its change in direction, or simply because strategy games don’t really have a big market right now.

Robot Entertainment was working on the game and then gave the reigns to Gas Powered games, which also kind of indicates the problems the publisher faced while trying to make a big profit out of the game.

Here’s what executive producer Kevin “Trajan” Perry wrote on their blog (Via GamesIndustry.Biz)

“Creating top-tier content, as we have been for the last year and a half, is very expensive-too expensive to maintain for long, as it turns out. We can no longer afford to keep creating it. AOEO already has a very large amount of high-quality, hand-crafted entertainment, and adding more is no longer cost-effective,” he said.

“This is a bittersweet announcement for me to make. While I wish that we had been able to add everything that we had wanted (especially a Roman civilisation), I am very proud of the work that has been done to get to this point. Over the past year specifically we have made a significant amount of changes to the service, including highly complex changes like altering the business model entirely.”

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.