Long-in-the-works EVE Online FPS Project Nova is officially cancelled

EVE Online studio CCP Games has confirmed its troubled EVE-themed multiplayer shooter Project Nova is officially cancelled, although work on a new sci-fi shooter, with expanded scope, will continue at its London studio.

Project Nova was initially unveiled in 2016 as a spiritual successor to CCP's long-defunct free-to-play PS3 shooter Dust 514. All went largely silent after that, however, and it wasn't until October 2018 that more on the game - said to offer a blend of "tactical co-op PvE and explosive PvP modes, with a strong emphasis on mastery and strategy" - was finally revealed.

Just one month later, though, CCP announced it would "return to the drawing board" with Project Nova, telling fans that the "gameplay experience in its current form does not live up to our original vision and would not achieve our ambitious goals for this project."

Now, 18 months later, CCP is officially laying Project Nova to rest, once again citing the same gameplay concerns raised previously. As a result, all members of its Iceland-based development team have been moved onto other projects at the Reykjavík studio.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, CCP isn't yet ready to give up on its ambitions to create a EVE-themed online shooter, and it has now tasked its London studio with evolving the concept further, albeit under a new moniker.

"We remain committed to offering a rock-solid, action-oriented gameplay experience with stellar visuals," explained CCP's head of PR George Kelion in a statement posted to Reddit, "but due to significant changes in the scope and direction of our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, it also made sense to update how we refer to this project internally. So, we are no longer using the codename Project Nova for this game concept."

CCP also says it will move away from publicly announcing its internal project codenames in the future, and will instead wait until it's ready for a full reveal. "We want to show you rather than tell you how we have evolved this concept and we're looking forward to doing so when the time comes to present this concept as a fully-fledged game", concluded Kelion.

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