Sword fighting sim Clang officially shelved

Neal Stephenson's Clang has been officially cancelled, a year after developer Subutai put the project on hold pending further investment.

Clang has failed to attract the kind of investment required to take it beyond the prototype phase and has been shelved, Subutai has confirmed.

In a Kickstarter update, Stephenson said that various leads have not panned out, and that he and other investors will be taking a loss.

"The team had considerable incentives - emotional and financial - to see CLANG move on to the next round of funding. In the end, however, additional fundraising efforts failed and forced the team to cut their losses and disband in search of steady work," he said.

There are some aspects of the Clang project that may see the light of day sometime, but Stephenson said he can longer wait until he has something else to show before formally cancelling Clang.

"I kept thinking that at least one of them would reach a point where I could describe it in something other than generalities. I apologize for that delay. But now a year has passed since the last update and I've decided that it's cleaner and simpler to cut the cord, and announce the termination of CLANG."

"Although these ideas and opportunities may ultimately wind up in some of the same places we wanted to take CLANG, they will do so in non-obvious ways, by starting from a clean sheet of paper in each case, building new teams, and pursuing projects that in some cases have no obvious connection to historical swordfighting," he said.

"I have delayed talking publicly about these projects for a long time because I kept thinking that at least one of them would reach a point where I could describe it in something other than generalities. I apologize for that delay. But now a year has passed since the last update and I've decided that it's cleaner and simpler to cut the cord, and announce the termination of CLANG. Future announcements can then happen in their own good time, giving any new projects a fresh start."

Stephenson said the prototype the developer created as a result of a Kickstarter funding campaign was not successful.

"The prototype was technically innovative, but it wasn't very fun to play," he said.

"This is for various reasons. Some of these were beyond our control. Others are my responsibility in that I probably focused too much on historical accuracy and not enough on making it sufficiently fun to attract additional investment."

"Thanks for backing the CLANG project. I am sorry that we were unable to advance it beyond the phase that you funded," Stephenson concluded.

Backers who have asked for it have had their pledges refunded.

Clang was crowdfunded in July 2012 and put on hold in September last year.