This is no joke.
I have some very serious and sad news to report.
I wanted to let every one know that do to the recent legal action by the developers of GalCiv 2 and the recent copy write infringement suite they filed against Malfador, Space Empires V has been placed on indefinite hold. I half expected to see many posts about this today, but SSI hasn't even announced it on their site yet. I am not surprised that news of this disappointing situation hasn't been widely reported. However, I am sure that we will be seeing more info in the next few weeks regarding this matter. Again, this is no April fools joke.
The beta test has also been placed on suspended status. No further beta testing is planned for the immedate foreseeable future.
This comes as a huge shock to many of us, and given the fact that it is Aprils fools day, I doubt any of this will be taken serious until it truly sinks in a day or so from now.
Malfador gave me permission to post this to SE.net, but since I could not log onto SE.net I posted it here first.
This is truly a low blow to the fans and the community of Space Empires. At least we still have SE IV to play.
Hopefully Aaron or SFI will post some news or perhaps even an update on the situation on the SFI forums or the Malfador web site sometime soon. Lets all pray that this legal mess can be sorted out in a timely manor and that the fine game developers of GalCiv 2 as well as our favorite 4x game maker, Malfador, can come to some kind of an agreement over whatever it is that has them in an up roar against each other.
This is truly a sad sad day for us all. And the fact that this news has to be broken on Aprils fools day only adds insult to injury.
There is some information regarding the lawsuit and this story at this
Gamehot Article