Steam MMO Book of Travels shuts down in the best way possible

The only thing harder than launching a live-service shooter in the current gaming industry ecosystem might be sustaining a brand-new massively multiplayer online game. Outside a select few mainstays, most fresh MMOs don’t stick around for that long. Book of Travels, a tiny MMO that originally launched in 2021, is about to suffer a similar fate. But in a twist, this is not a story about a promising game forever being lost to the ether.

Book of Travels is a gorgeous, small-scale MMO that makes the player feel like they are exploring a living, breathing painting. While Book of Travels features standard MMO activities like exploration, fishing, and bartering, much of its appeal lies in its open-ended, meditative nature. The developers compare the experience to something like Animal Crossing or Journey. The world operates under a specific schedule, and players can cooperate with one another to accomplish tasks. But not only are the servers small, there’s also no text chat. This allows player encounters to feel more magical than they would in, say, a typical toxic first-person shooter lobby.

Even negative Steam reviews for Book of Travels say the idea was a special one, but ultimately, developers Might and Delight couldn’t make it work. Layoffs and low player counts made ongoing development difficult, and the MMO never came out of early access. Now, as Rock Paper Shotgun reports, the game is being shut down — but this is not the end.

The developers are turning Book of Travels into a single-player experience that will cost $4.99 instead of the previous $29.99. Might and Delight are adjusting the game to make solo experiences viable as well. The studio is adding mod support, so die-hard fans can keep the experience alive in whatever way they want.

“It was truly the project of a lifetime for us,” Might and Delight wrote in the game’s final Steam announcement, where many of its development obstacles are recounted. “However, the very foundation upon which the game was built proved unsustainable. No matter how many approaches we tried, workarounds we implemented, or patches we created we were never really able to solve the core issues.”

“With this update, we can preserve Book of Travels in a way that still allows its world to live on,” the developers continued.

Servers will officially shut down on July 31, which gives fans time to download their old characters. This is a bittersweet fate for a game with such lofty ambitions. It’s also a far better outcome than having Book of Travels disappear forever. Now there’s a chance that more people will get to appreciate the gorgeous, hand-drawn world Might and Delight once brought to life. With its painterly landscape, future players can think of it as paying for a cheap museum ticket. It’s worth the admission just to experience the gorgeous water animations.

“Heart broken since this was my all-time favorite RPG experience and world to wander through,” one player wrote in the Steam comments.

“I didn’t play this game as much as I should have,” another wrote. “I wish I could go back and change that.”

“I wish we’d live in a world where you can develop such poetic and soothing experience without having to compromise for money,” yet another opined. “This game is such a gem … Please don’t see that as a failure, you’ve managed to create such a beautiful and meaningful game.”

Book of Travels is available through Steam for Mac, Windows PC, and SteamOS/Linux.