Alpha-funded Steam game Towns abandoned by devs

A day after Valve was forced to remove a game from Steam for deceitful marketing, the company now has another dilemma on its hands, as the team behind a well publicized alpha game has decided to pull the plug. Towns, a city building/management game with RPG elements, first launched on Steam at the end of 2012 as an in-development game (this was just before Steam Early Access launched.) It was one of the very first games to pass through Steam Greenlight, as it was voted through in the first batch of 10. Now developer Florian Frankenberger, who joined the team only months ago, has admitted that the game isn't selling as well as hoping, and that development has now been abandoned. In fact, the team is currently thinking about instead working on a sequel to Towns through which they want to implement all the features that they could not with the original game. Frankenberger was handed the reins for the project earlier this year, after developer Xavi Canal said that he was burned out on development, and could no longer continue. As you'd expect, those people who have purchased and supported the game aren't too pleased, with numerous negative user reviews appearing on Steam, and negative comments on Frankenberger's forum post. At last count, Towns had sold more than 200,000 copies, and generated gross revenue of more than $2 million. Gamasutra has contacted Valve to find out what the company's policy is on in-development and Steam Early Access games that are abandoned. Notably, you can still buy the game via Steam, regardless of the fact that there are no longer plans to complete development.