Embers Adrift Going Temporarily F2P And Making Emergency Steam Migration After Missing Payments From Current Vendor

This story kind of sucks to write. On the surface, covering games (particularly smaller ones made by smaller teams) going free-to-play isn't all that unusal in my line of work. Sometimes an MMO's player base just isn't big enough to cover costs, so F2P is the usual "Plan B" for some games.

That's not the case here.

Not at all.

Embers Adrift, a smaller MMORPG from the smaller team at Stormhaven Studios, will be going free-to-play. This isn't a permanent thing, though. So what gives?

According to the company, their current payment processor, Digital River, has failed to make any revenue payments to the Embers Adrift team since receiving their June payment. The announcement, dropped on X today, also alleges that other customers of Digital River seem to be in the same boat. After attempting to reach out to Digital River and finding out their agreement had been modified without their permission, Stormhaven Studios sent a legal letter that they have delivery confirmation for, but they've received no reply as of yet.

This obviously puts a huge pinch on a small team. To try and rebound through this situation, Embers Adrift will be moving their game to Steam as soon as possible. This could take a few months though. In the meantime, the company will no longer be charging subscribers. The MMO will also go F2P until the Steam version is up. Once up, Embers Adrift will return to charging a box price and selling a subscription. While the game is F2P, all players will get subscription benefits for free.

It's for a TERRIBLE reason, but if you've been on the fence about Embers Adrift, then now is REALLY the time to try it out and get the benefits of the subscription at literally zero cost.

If you'd like to help the team out during this ordeal, they're also accepting donations to help keep the lights on.

We've reached out to Digital River to ask about the situation and will update this piece should we hear back.