Visual novel developer Dischan Media never had the chance to catch a break. Due to a wide variety of issues, many of which were probably never disclosed, the team frequently flirted with closure. Back in 2014 they announced they had to “temporarily halt game development” on the Dysfunctional Systems episodic series. Then, due to a groundswell of fan support, they ran a Kickstarter. Unfortunately, what they managed to create via Kickstarter funding was not a particularly high quality product, and they asked for far less funding than turned out to be needed. This is a superbly unfortunate issue that plagues countless crowdfunding campaigns.
“Full time development” was ceased in early 2015. At that point, I reported on the events and still had hope for an eventual revival for the visual novel series. Well, it seems the end has finally come for Dischan Media. Today a blog entitled “The End of Dischan Media” went live and announced their official closure. Requests for refunds on their Kickstarter are about halfway completed at this point and they will continue providing them. Those who own a product through the Dischan store can still download them, but after 30 days this access will go offline. Because they are DRM-free, you’ll be able to save and copy the data as you wish, though.
It’s never pleasant to see a game developer go under. Dischan Media is an especially hard hit for me because I was thrilled by Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos when I played it back in 2013. Good luck to all the previous team members on whatever they do next.
Damn tough break 🙁