As many of you have noticed, we haven't been terribly forthcoming with our plans for the future, of late. This has been, in large part, because we haven't been sure if there was going to *be* much of a future for our company or our game. Some of you are aware that I personally have funded the company from its inception. I didn't have a huge amount of money to begin with, so we've learned to stretch our finances pretty far. We've survived for several years, building the game you've seen and looking for a publisher to fund us to completion. As of the beginning of this month, however, I am beyond broke. Ray and Waylon ceased to be paid their minimal-survival salaries at the beginning of the month. Ray has been looking for jobs, Waylon moved his computer home to save on gas and food costs. We've scrounged enough to keep the office for a short period of time, but our outlook is somewhat grim. There have been hopeful possibilities with publishers and the like, but none have panned out, and things have gotten to a pretty bad state for us.

Anyway, it was time to give you, our userbase, a heads-up about this. We aren't dead yet, but we may be soon. The game servers will not be going down immediately, but I'm not going to comment further on the post-demise possibilities for the game at the moment. That eventuality is still a little.. painful, at present.

Our thanks to everyone. OEMs have been very supportive. Matrox, ATI, Nvidia and Apple have all been wonderful to us. Websites like GameSpy, Penny Arcade, Inside Mac Games, Happy Penguin, FreshMeat and Linux Games have all helped us get the word out. Without them we would not have the great base of users that has evolved.

And as for our users, we thank you all for your encouragement and good will over the period of the Vendetta Test. Some of you even asked that we make donations possible, and have since made generous monetary contributions. People have offered to help us host the game, send us hardware, given us their time and ideas, all in the interest that our game might succeed. We are eternally grateful. It has been wonderful to experience so many people being so excited about our project. It's not been easy for any of us here, living on faith and laboring towards an uncertain future. But having a base of people so genuinely thrilled about our creation-in-progress has really made things a lot more positive. I.. wish we could have more fully delivered on all your hopes, as well as our own.

We will be talking with our families, considering our options, and meeting next monday to further decide the fate of our company. Until then, I remain,

John "Incarnate" Bergman
Managing Director
Guild Software, Inc.