Shut Down in 2023, Medieval MMO Gloria Victis Is Being Resurrected Under New Ownership

Gloria Victis, the medieval MMO that Black Eye Games shut down in 2023 after six years of early access and less than a year of full release, is coming back. Publisher Gamigo has acquired the license and plans to relaunch the game as a free-to-play title, with a Discord server set to relaunch on March 2 as the first concrete step toward that return.

Black Eye Games cited financial strain and developer burnout when it closed both the studio and Gloria Victis two years ago. The game had reached full release in 2022 but never gained enough momentum to sustain operations. Development had started well before the early access period, meaning the project spanned nearly a decade before going dark.

Gamigo announced the acquisition on Steam, framing the comeback around the original game's territory control and siege mechanics. The announcement described catapults, trebuchets, ballistas, rams, and mantlets operating alongside partial destruction systems, and characterized the large-scale open-world PvP as shaped entirely by player decisions rather than scripted or instanced encounters.

"Rivalries form. Politics unfold. Alliances are forged and some broken. Gloria Victis has created stories that only the players could write, and we believe those stories deserve to continue. You know what makes it even more exceptional? The game delivers all of this without sacrificing realism."

— Gamigo

The announcement has not landed uniformly well. Some players who paid for the original release have objected to seeing the game relaunched free-to-play for everyone. Others have raised concerns about cheating and pay-to-win mechanics, two issues that tend to follow free-to-play conversions of games with competitive PvP at their center. Whether previous owners will receive any compensation or recognition has not been addressed.

Gamigo has pushed back against the pay-to-win concern directly, stating the relaunched game will have skill-based combat at its core with no pay-to-win elements. I think that framing will do little to settle skepticism until players can test the monetization structure themselves, since such assurances are common at announcement and often erode in practice. The studio has also stated its intent to preserve the core experience while improving stability, fixing bugs, and introducing quality-of-life updates through development.

Support for the return does exist among players who engaged with the original. Gloria Victis built a specific audience around its siege warfare and organic political gameplay, and a portion of that community has expressed cautious interest in seeing those systems survive the transition to new ownership. The question for that group is how much Gamigo alters in pursuit of a broader free-to-play audience.

No release date has been announced. The Discord relaunch on March 2 is currently the only scheduled milestone, and I see it primarily as a way for Gamigo to gauge how much of the original player base is still reachable before committing to a development timeline on Steam and beyond.

Gloria Victis sits in a crowded corner of the MMO space. The medieval setting is not unusual, but the combination of large-scale territorial PvP, realistic combat, and player-driven politics without instancing gave it a distinct identity during its original run. Whether Gamigo can maintain that identity while converting it to free-to-play, attracting new players, and managing the concerns of veterans is the challenge the relaunch will have to answer.

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