Project Torque Closing Down

With sadness in their tone Aeria Games has announced that Project Torque will shut down its servers on the 2nd of August.

"We (Invictus & Aeria Games) had ultimately put a lot of faith in the Julia build to help us grow the community back to what it used to be. Although we had seen some improvements (some older and newer players returning to the game!), it is simply not happening as fast as we had hoped.

Sadly to say, despite our best of efforts we are no longer able to support the game. We have put together a schedule for the remainder of the month that will lead into the server final shut down."

The shutdown schedule, ironically named "The final burnout schedule" is as such:

 

July 15th 2010: Shut down of both the in game and web item malls from making purchases of AP Items. RP currency will still be usable during this time. During this time Aeria will be unlocking just about all unreleased items and running nonstop events in the game for prizes. This includes the unreleased cars that have yet to make it into the game.

July 17th through August 2nd: Daily events will be run that give out numerous prizes and locked items that have not yet been released in PT.

August 2nd 2010: Complete shutdown of the game servers.

August 3rd 2010: Closing down of PT Forums.

That doesn't leave a lot of time left for Project Torque but Aeria won't leave Torque players hanging, they have prepared the following compensation package:

"We do plan on creating special promotional offers during this time frame as compensation to the few and proud users left in our great community. Some include a 100% AP refund for users who have spent in the last 90 days. A 200 AP gift for all current Active PT players (most likely a email with key redemption process) and possible setup of special packages from our current lineup of games that may include items from each title. We know a few play our other titles like Wolf Team and we will let you know as soon as information is available on these packages. We will be posting a separate thread up once we complete all the details of these offers. Rest assured we will take care of you all as best we can!"

At the end of the message GM_1Fastcrx has his personal note as well:

"As most of you know I have been a GM for this great game for over 2 years now and I loved every minute of it! Yes some of you were a pain! But it didn’t matter we all had a blast together and respected one another throughout the thick and thin, the ups and downs, and the flat out just terrible times.

We all had nothing but hope for Project Torque here at Aeria Games, and to this day still believe that Invictus has a great game and that it will get the recognition it deserves one day. Again you are all aware of the hardships that we have endured throughout the past 2 years. There are a strong few that are still here and have stuck to it since the beginning. I really must say that even in the darkness that has shadowed PT in the last two years there is still light in the end of it all. We have all gained new friendships, memories, and overall exciting experiences.

I could not have asked for a better community to be a part of and a better game to be a GM for. I thank each and every one of you for your continued support! You ultimately were the ones responsible for this games success and progress. The game will now be back in Invictus’s hands, in the hopes that they will excel Project Torque to new heights and continue to progress the game."

There are some Project Torque players that are trying to convince Aeria to keep the game going via a petition, if you are one of them you can go sign it, although it is probably a good idea to not get your hopes up.

So the silver lining of this story is that Invictus might bring back Project Torque. The original name of the game is Level R, which European and Asian players can still connect to!