The developers blame project management, and there are signs that the game has been canceled… who is to blame?

Convallaria, a game that appeared as part of the PlayStation China Hero Project program, mysteriously disappeared in recent years, leading fans to speculate that it was canceled. According to the latest update on the China Hero Project website, it appears that PlayStation no longer lists the game as part of its program. The game’s developers contacted MP1st to discuss the troubled development of the game, allegations of poor management, and other issues.

Last weekend, MP1st received documents containing letters of complaint sent to SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment). The letters detail the ongoing progress of Loongforce’s upcoming title, Convallaria, and explain why no release date has been announced yet. Noisy Pixel recently published the details of these documents, which are the same ones that MP1st received. Apparently, the management responsible for the China Hero Project is delaying funding, threatening further payment delays, ignoring communication channels, and making unusual demands, including repeating completed tasks, involving an IT company whose leaders are personally known to the management, shifting costs to the studio, and even attempting to hijack and take over the project entirely.

MP1st obtained email correspondence between Loongforce and Bo Bao, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s director of game production in China. This correspondence corroborates Loongforce’s allegations of late payments and explicit threats by Virtuos, a support studio, to take over the entire development of the project. During its investigation, MP1st consulted several sources, one of whom noted that it is completely normal for another studio to take over part of a project’s development, but not all of it, which would be considered outside the norm.

PlayStation recently updated its China Hero Project website, affecting the websites in the US, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. This update has not yet affected Asian and Oceanic countries. Upon closer inspection, we can see that projects that were previously in development and have already been released have been removed, while projects that are still in development or have recently been announced have been added to the pages. Convallaria, however, has completely disappeared from the updated regional pages. The page has been updated over the past two months.

Could this be an error on their part, because they thought all Phase 2 games had already been released? Or perhaps it suggests they quietly gave up on the project, which would explain why nothing internally has changed in the past few months. Regardless of whether the game will be a huge commercial success or a complete failure, it’s disheartening to see a small studio like Loongforce treated so dismissively. If there is truth to what they claim, it doesn’t leave a good impression of the China Hero Project, especially for indie studios that want to participate in it in the future…

Source: MP1st, Noisy Pixel, Sony, Archive.org