It seems that roller-derby season isn't starting any time soon, as Ubisoft has announced that Roller Champions has been delayed. It was supposed to launch some time in Q1 this year, but will now come out in late Spring. The developer released a statement on the game's Discord server.
"After evaluating every possible scenario, the team has concluded that they will need a bit more time to deliver the successful game you deserve. We believe it's the right decision to properly honor your excitement (and our own!) for the game and the competitive scene you've started around our beta," reads the message.
"We are hard at work for the wait to be worth your confidence in Roller Champions as the game is getting closer to launch every day. We know that many of you have been following the development of the game for a while now and to showcase our appreciation of your continued support, we wanted to make sure you get this news first: Roller Champions will be releasing this late spring. The wait is almost over and it is thanks to your trust in our team that we have been able to make such progress."
The delay comes as sort of a surprise, as the game started conducting closed betas over a year ago. Perhaps the team received a lot of feedback from the community, and the delay was required in order to incorporate it. Ubisoft's decision to announce only on the game's Discord server is curious, however.
So what is Ubisoft doing till then? Making its open worlds bigger is what. The developer announced Scaler, a cloud computing driven developer tool which will enable developers to create massive open worlds that can potentially be populated with an unlimited number of players.
"Cloud computing – what Ubisoft Scalar enables – means the processing power for a game isn’t tied to a single machine, but a decentralized computation system," product director Per-Olof Romell explained. " The processing is taking place in the cloud. This eliminates the limits of local hardware for players, improves the quality of games, and opens up new possibilities for game developers."