In a post on their website, CCP Games has announced that the previously planned Invite-Only Alpha for Project Nova is on indefinite hiatus after reviewing the current state of the game.
A spiritual successor to Dust 514, Project Nova is a first person shooter that exists inside and alongside EVE Online. Project Nova was shown at EVE Vegas earlier this year in October, and after looking over the game both internally and via external playtesters, CCP has decided its not currently to their standards. The alpha was announced in October during EVE Vegas and was to launch at some time in November.
Over the course of Project Nova’s development, we conducted a number of player research sessions with external partners, tirelessly playtested the game internally and brought community stalwarts in to help us evaluate the project. Now, after taking all this research and feedback into account, we see that the gameplay experience in its current form does not live up to our original vision and would not achieve our ambitious goals for this project. As a result, we will not be moving forward with the upcoming invite-only Alpha until further notice.
This is merely a set back though and not cancellation, as CCP plans to continue to evolve and improve Project Nova before release and are in no rush to push it out as early as possible. As a successor to Dust 514, Project Nova has a lot to prove as the PlayStation 3 shooter was an ambitious but negatively received tie-in to EVE Online that shut down in 2016, three years after release. Much like with Dust 514, CCP are pushing Project Nova as part of “One Universe//One War,” which means that events and players in EVE Online can have direct effects on the first person shooter, such as calling orbital bombardments and EVE corporations hiring players to fight for control of planets. CCP Games was also recently acquired by Pearl Abyss, most known as the developer behind Black Desert Online a popular MMORPG.