DreamWorld MMO to be retired from Steam Early Access

DreamWorld, a sandbox MMO that raised almost $65,000 on Kickstarter in 2021 and had backing from Y Combinator, launched on Steam Early Access on March 10 after five years of development. The project promised an "infinite open world MMO" with millions of players and thousands of biomes, but it is now closing.

Trouble surfaced early: a deep dive called it a "giant fiasco", citing inexperienced developers, allegedly stolen or improperly credited assets, poorly secured and easily hackable servers, and ambitions so large that some accused it of being a scam. On Steam it reached a peak concurrent player count of 56 and quickly tailed off to zero.

User reviews—36 of them as of writing—are "mixed", with one user noting, "I do not think this is a scam but it has a ways to go before i would call it a game." A brief Steam update states, "DreamWorld is being retired from Steam Early Access and removed from sale," explaining that hosted online services are being shut down and online and server-dependent functionality will no longer be available.

dreamworld, sandbox mmo, steam, early access, kickstarter, y combinator, hackable servers, stolen assets, concurrent players, mixed reviews