Just sorting through some stuff, so thought I'd check back in here and leave a post for those who may not know.
Otherland was sunset by its publisher on the 13th October 2021. The servers had been mostly offline for the latter half of September, too. The community was kept in the dark about the situation with the game until the 22nd of November when a couple of us were able to get a response from a dev at Drago. It seems the publisher was dissolved, so the game went down with it. It's currently in a limbo on Steam, where the game remains listed and downloadable with the DLC purchasable without having servers and without being playable offline.
The response we got is below, from Drago Redex:
Well first of all, thank you all for the continuous interest in the game, I am stunned to see how many of you are here and how many players would love to see the servers back up and running. Hearing gratitude from players only means that we were able to bring at least some joy to your lives via this title. Regarding the servers, they were shut down by Game OL.
I wish I could deliver better news to you all instead of this. We are currently working on multiple other titles that are in works or released already and perhaps some of you might find refuge and interest in them as well.
I can't say it's a surprise considering the lack of updates and low playerbase, but it's still incredibly sad to see it go. Visually this game was an absolute masterpiece and I know for me personally- joining the Otherland community, helping to document the game with others, and playing through its weird and wonderful worlds gave me a lot of solace in an overwise very difficult year.
It's incredible that for a game this niche and unknown, the wiki has almost 1500 pages and over 100,000 edits! Serious kudos to everyone who put so much work into documenting it here, it's so nice to know that all the quest text and information about the game is preserved for those who want it. When I have some time I'll dig back through my screenshots and see if there are any last bits I can add.
For anyone who wants to relive Otherland in a more visual way, myself and a couple of other community members put a lot of work into video documentation, you can check out my userpage for some more info, it's mostly no-commentary playthroughs and an interactive map project we worked on, placing locations of merchants/services/world quests, etc.
We also have an unofficial discord community, if anyone ever feels like popping along to reminisce with us :)
- Gwylen