Blaseball, the bizarre, beautiful sports gambling horror sim, is ending forever
The first season of Blaseball—not baseball—ended with the opening of the Forbidden Book. A solar eclipse immediately followed; the umpires' eyes turned white, the Moab Desert disappeared into a gaping Hellmouth, and star player Jaylen Hotdogfingers burst into flames. That was the beginning, not the end, of the deep, awesome weirdness that was the hallmark of the browser-based sports gambling horror sim—a later season ended «with a goddamn JRPG boss fight»—but three years later, the strange beauty has finally run its course.
«It is with a heavy heart we announce that we are not going to run the Coronation Era as planned and are making the decision to end Blaseball today,» developer The Game Band announced today.
«The short of it is that Blaseball isn’t sustainable to run. Since Blaseball’s inception, we’ve been fighting against the amount of work it takes to keep Blaseball true to itself while financially supporting the team and keeping our staff healthy. We’ve tried countless solutions to make it work, and we’ve come to the conclusion that this fight isn’t one we can win in the long run. The cost, literally and metaphorically, is too high.»
Because of that, the studio has elected to put a definite end to Blaseball, rather than changing «into something unrecognizable.» That also means, unfortunately, that many members of The Game Band are being let go: The studio said the size of the team «has to change to give us enough runway to even begin to make something new.» The number of layoffs isn't known, but The Game Band said those being let go are getting severance, healthcare extensions, and dedicated resources for finding new work.
Signs of trouble for Blaseball have persisted over the past several months. The most recent
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