Face of Mankind was cancelled in 2008 and the following statement appeared on he official website:
"The development of Face of Mankind: Rebirth has been canceled. There are several
reasons for this decision, of which some you might understand and others you won't.
The main reason is the lack of financial resources to develop the game and finish
it the way we want. FoM, as many other MMORPGs today, is a game that relies heavily
on visual content. For us, being only a small development studio with very limited
resources, it would be nearly impossible to make the game we want it to be. You
might wonder what there is to change? It runs fine and works in a way. That's right,
but not the way it's supposed to. And spending so much more power and private funding
into the project made not much sense anymore. There might be a time for FoM in the
future, but it's just not now.
We thought about several ways to get the financing done. We tried finding a new
publisher or getting investments from other sources. The best solution for the game
would have been a publisher who is not solely interested in making quick money.
Especially when it comes to MMO's, that have so much financial potential, the only
way to go is careful development, testing and a well planned release. This doesn't
necessarily have to mean a big multi-million budget. Many games are just oversized
these days.
After all, this is not the end for Duplex Systems. We have tons of ideas and plans
and are fully dedicated to develop those MMO's that the current market needs.
In a certain way, I have to admit that FoM was oversized as well. We accomplished
more than we were actually supposed to for such a small company. Many wondered if
Duplex Systems was just a one-man show. Altogether this is obviously not true, but
at times it was. And it made me crash down physically by the end of 2005. Even
though I was able to bring the development of FoM to an end, it made me change my
life and the way I run business drastically."
