Spokane-based Cyan Worlds ends Uru online

SPOKANE — The maker of the computer game Uru last week pulled the plug on an online version of the game.

Cyan Worlds, which hit it big with Myst, had hoped that Uru Live would lure enough players willing to pay a monthly fee that it could afford to continuously update the game with new content.

"We needed a certain number of subscribers to pay the bills. We didn't get there," said Rand Miller, owner of Cyan, on the company's Web site last week.

"The idea of ongoing content was dramatic and forward-looking, but it required a substantial continuing effort to sustain," Miller said. "We were just not able to sign up the number of subscribers (even for free) necessary to pay for that effort."

However, enough new content for Uru already has been created that it will be sold as expansion packs for the game, Miller said. The first will be available in the next month or two, and will be free, he said.

Miller also said that a Mac version of Uru is being created.

He said the demise of Uru Live actually had a silver lining, since it would prompt the updates of the game to be more widely distributed "to a larger audience, including those people without broadband."

Cyan officials have said the single-player version of the game, which costs $49, is selling well.

But Bill Slease, Cyan's live content director, told a discussion group recently that most players never signed up for the online version, even though it initially was free.

Cyan spent five years and more than $12 million to make the virtual world of Uru, which was released shortly before Christmas.

Uru is more sophisticated visually than previous Cyan games, with characters moving in real time through surreally beautiful landscapes.

Miller had estimated Cyan needed 100,000 subscribers willing to pay somewhere between $10 to $15 per month to make a profit on the new content.

But analysts warned that online subscription gaming had had few successes beyond the dragon-slaying game "Everquest."