This is sad news for me, but I hope it's the best for all of us including the Devs, work harder and make a better Settlers, we believe in all of you and thank you for listening to us, cheer teams, you will see a bright future ahead.

Sometimes adding new changes will effect what's already done in game. Adding additional data might corrupt the original database creating an unplayable game. This happened to your game and I have decided to refrain from spinning my wheels trying to get things done here.
Sincerely Zhendroh

Dude that is awesome. Ty for that decision. Make settlers great again.

@editorial that sadly is still not much info. its just about postponing stuff. what i would love to know is WHAT exactly this vision is that the team is having and what is being worked on. just saying "we'll work a bit" will have fantasies fly on what will come and there will not be any feedback on what people actually want to see. So in the end everyone will be disappointed again.

If that is too difficult then i just give you an example on how that could be done, there are amazing means of communication done by studios with early access titles out there like spoiler If i should be honest, i think this would help this title a lot, there could also be a forum page with threads of requested features sorted by upvotes and not by most recent post



edit:
Let me be clear: the people who will advertise a game for you free of charge are those that write lengthy feedback. The people who ruin your chances of getting any foot on a competitive market if the game is not good are those that - you guessed it - write lengthy feedback.
If you want this game to have a chance of coming back from the dead you need to set up good communication with the people giving you the feedback you want. And to make it clear again: you dont want the "good feedback", you want the ones that are lengthy and spit critique. be it words of praise or dissatisfaction. However if those short encouragements are the grand majority then it is a good general direction.

For starters here are some ideas on how things could be tackled

1. you could give out some different versions of the game over the course of a week to press and influencers on the condition they show all of them and link a simple multiple choice survey with just one page. it could be something like "which version should be the groundwork of further development" and then versions like pre-alpha 2019, alpha 2020, alpha 2021, beta 2022
2. based off of the feedback of that one certain yt-video of one of the alpha testers gave, if this really represents what the testers said at that point. maybe scrap the 2019 version of the ship stuff and release the game (2020 version) as land only and patch ships in later. the video also mentioned really bad AI and i think that is the first thing you want to work on first to keep the people playing casually. maybe one difficulty first, a more easy one where it doesnt matter if it is not perfect but with enough game customisation features to allow 1 vs 3 to make up for the low difficulty and patch in better AI later.

A possible Roadmap could look like this (still an idea based off of 2020 version from the german alpha tester statement):
release: land only, easy difficulty, the campaign might not be finished but there could be a prologue to it already accessible
then get yourselves 2 months to finish the campaign to be really solid, maybe with help of some hand picked community members for ideas and feedback of course under nda, but take the feedback and dont ignore it
then 4 months for better ai features and to keep the designers busy maybe a second look for the map or crude models for a possible 4th folk
the rest of the 6 months can be spent on making the ships work so they are ready to hit the games on the first anniversary

if the funding is lacking there could be -Anno like- the 4th folk as a dlc in between year 1, and here again: get yourself feedback on if it works
but i would advise against anything that got promised to be in the full release to be made into a dlc if it will be patched in after release. <- that stuff makes ppl mad

year 2 may add a second campaign, for a different folk, or if the first one is not folk-specific make the second one to be first of 3 to be folk-specific
and other stuff that can be decided on with the communities ideas in a place like the anno-union, and maybe name it something like settlers-alliance or so... .....


well... i put way too much time into this for it to be probably never read by the people who should ^^

I have been playing since Serf City:Life is Feudal and I think it was the correct decision. I wasn't too sure if I liked the beta. I was going to buy it but I was prepared for disappointment. Thanks for making this call. I can be patient

they mad the right decision . dosent represent a settlers game at all

Thank you for that decision! I appreciate your assessment of the Beta phase and taking the players seriously. Instead of going into hiding now again, please also make the decision to communicate frequently!

I am very happy that you guys listened to all the feedback and decided to postpone the release.
I hope you guys will make it more economical-focused rather than realtime RTS, let's get back to the Settlers 3 roots.

Cheers!

@editorial Thank you for this decision, it must be hard with a sales team breathing in your neck and I guess there's also no money tree to fund this project for in eternity. I know there are many similair reactions like what I am about to write but that just underscores the importance of it I guess.

First of all, I am still a bit concerned after reading this message because you are speaking of: 'As we went through this feedback, it became clear to our team that the quality wasn’t yet in line with the team’s vision.' I think on this point you could be a little bit more humble and I hope the people who decided the game had to change from a real Settlers game (2019/2020 version) to a watered down and simplified AoE4-ish game (Beta) don't call the shots on further development! In my opinion you should try to get Volker back on the team to secure the quality of gameplay. Maybe he can just give you advise if he doesn't want to rejoin. I saw an official Settlers video from 2019 in which he exactly explains what a good Settlers game needs! Back then you were on the right track, Yippie! Maybe there is no room to implement all the things previously mentioned but there must be at least a solid economy system at the base of the game, period. Your settlers NEED food, the chains for making food must be all there. The same for tools etc, just look at Settlers 2, 3, 4 games. For me that would be the most important thing, and of course the bloody forester! The coin system with different coins (silver/gold) is maybe too much. Just make a mint which makes coins from coal and gold, use coins to upgrade the troops in the guard houses. Guard houses, another must! Expend terrain through guard houses like in Alpha 2019. Maybe the 'helpers' can also stay but Solid guardhouses (not the magic sprawling things from beta) are essential to Settlers. Please bring them back from the 2019 Alpha/2020 version. And another thing I really would like to see is a free cinematic camera. You spend so much time and energy on all the beautiful graphics and animations (still my compliments on that, the design team did a great job!). I want to be able to zoom in and watch all the Settlers do their thing. I don't want to be restricted by a camera. In the 2019 Alpha version the camera system worked well. I guess that's enough ranting from me.

I really hope you don't vanish again but listen to the people who ultimately will buy or will not buy your games. Please present us a roadmap with the key developments and keep us informed on future plans. I wish you all the best and hopefully you'll present us a Settlers game the fans will love!

Take care!

Best gaming news I've seen in a while.

I had decided not to spend a dime on this game, but now I'm getting a little curious again.

You will not get any news....Ubisoft went quiet for a year and a half with questions being asked by us about the game, yet nothing, no reply nothing!!!
Then the Beta came and went (What a joke that was) and they remark in their official feedback was
wasn’t yet in line with the team’s vision
omg, really, how about the mass of negative feedback after the Beta, how about acknowledging us!!!!
SO im pretty sure mate there will be NO news till this is released now!

@molsonman
Since you're replying to my post:

That's why I said "a little curious", not excited, hyped or whatever.

@molsonman I think there won't be news either and the game will be simular to the closed beta. I don't think they want to release a real Settlers game anymore. They want to release a different game and they are using the Settlers name attract more people to the game...

@editorial @editorial Thank you Ubisoft / Dev Team. This was to 100% the rights decision.

I have not seen the 2019 Version before. (Only the old Trailer). After the Beta i searched for it. While i fully Unserstand that a streamline process was very necessary & needed, this was far over the top. It seem you were gone from one end to the other extreme end.
I hope you guys will find a good middleground now.
Also a good middleground between RTS and City building Game, like Settlers 3&4 did. A middleground between AoE and Anno.

Cheers

excactly this!

@editorial please bring back Volker so he can finish his game.

Sadly, at this rate, by the time this game is released it will be out of date.

Thank god.

Could not even play due to the camera view and very JRPG port like graphic settings (Meaning they are absolutely useless on a 2022 PC)

Content may not be the issue but graphical settings & camera SURE as heck are.
You guys need to use the settlers 7 views, this zoomed in junk is absolutely not enjoyable one bit.

How will pre-orders be compensated? They showed trust in you, expecting to be able to play the promised game tonight.