Neal Stephenson's Clang placed on hold

Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson's sword fighting game that appeared on Kickstarter last year has been placed on hold indefinitely due to the developers running out of money.

The motion-controlled game titled Clang collected $526,125 following its pitch asking for $500,000 from backers. Developer Subutai Corporation however only ever intended for this money to be used to make a prototype to get further interest from other investors.

According to an update on the Clang Kickstarter project page, the Kickstarter money has been stretched further than it was intended and now securing further funds is Subutai's main priority over further development on the game.

'We've hit the pause button on further Clang development while we get the financing situation sorted out,' said that Clang team. 'When a couple of promising leads fell through for us in a short span of time circa May, it became obvious to us that our essential people would have to find other ways to keep body and soul together during an upcoming span of time, of indeterminate length, during which the Clang project would be unable to pay them.'

The update also stresses that the project is not dead and has not been abandoned.

'At what point do you put a toe tag on an indie game and call it finished? Opinions on that might vary, but in our opinion, the project doesn't die simply because it runs out of money,' adds the team. 'Projects run out of money all the time. As a matter of fact, game industry veterans we have talked to take a blithe attitude toward running out of money, and seem to consider it an almost obligatory rite of passage.'

The lack of investor interest has been partly attributed to the current state of the industry. The Kickstarter update cites the fall of THQ and LucasArts as indicators of the difficult market conditions and suggests that with the current console generation drawing to a close, potential publishers are reluctant to put money behind an untested franchise that requires its own motion controller.

The Clang team closes its update with a call for patience and reassures backers that its alternatives so far have been to either quit, panic and sell out, or sign up with the wrong investor and that it has done neither of those things.