Ember Sword
The playable game arrived without the land sold before it
A browser-playable sandbox MMORPG from the Danish studio Bright Star Studios, built around player-owned land and cosmetics.
- Pledged in the land sale application phase
July 2021 applications: willingness to spend, not money received.
- Reported primary land-sale proceeds
- Estimated
Approximate primary land-sale proceeds reported by gaming outlets; contract settlement and refund reconciliation remain unresolved.
- Capital raised (announced)
- Reported figures differ
Conflicting reported investment totals; the later Bitkraft round had no disclosed amount.
- Early access to shutdown notice
- Estimated
Early access to the reported shutdown notice, 2 December 2024–21 May 2025; not development duration.
- Land pledges for plots never usable in game
Reported pledges, not distinct people; land ownership was not implemented in the playable build.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed round | 2020 | ||
| May 2021 round | 2021 | ||
| December 2021 round | 2021 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mark Laursen | — | Co-founder, Brainjuice Labs (since August 2026) | Oct 2026 | |
| Joris Huijbregts | — | humanfeedback.ai | Oct 2026 | |
| Sage Durain | — | Art director at Galactic Entertainment, January 2024 to November 2025 | Oct 2026 | |
| Loren Roosendaal | — | Founder and Chairman, Native Labs, Kanji and Galactic Entertainment | Oct 2026 | |
| Rob Pardo | Dec 2021 – end | Not established | Sep 2026 | |
| Dennis Fong | Dec 2021 – end | Not established | Sep 2026 | |
| Kevin Lin | Dec 2021 – end | Not established | Sep 2026 | |
| Jessica Mulligan | — | Not established | Sep 2026 |
Promises vs reality
Commitment
Land ownership was never available to play. The early access build that launched in December 2024 offered a slice of Solarwood with cosmetics unlocked by playing, and land was said to be coming in later stages. The servers went offline five months later with the feature still unshipped.
Buyers had been paying for plots since May 2021, three and a half years before the build they would have used first appeared.
Target
The studio abandoned Unity, went through several engine attempts and built its own engine to reach the browser. Early access did ship with browser access on macOS and Windows, but the switch cost time and the game never reached the mobile and any-device reach it was sold on.
Commitment
The game never left early access. Development and server support ended in May 2025 with the studio saying it could not secure the funding to continue.
What shipped
- · May 2021
- · Jul 2021
- · Apr 2022
- · Jun 2024
- · Jul 2024
- · Dec 2024
A missed promise is a missed promise. It is not evidence of fraud, and this page does not treat it as any.
Timeline
October 2018
Production began in 2018 under the Danish studio then called So Couch Studios, led by Mark Laursen, and the game was announced in October of that year. It was built on Unity and aimed at Windows and Android.
April 2020
The investment announcement identified the studio by its new Bright Star Studios name.
26 May 2021
The studio put the first 12,000 Solarwood plots on sale the following day. This announcement concerned that first phase, separate from later land applications.
29 July 2021
There's 48 hours left to submit your community land sale application. Demand has been truly massive, so get yours in while you can! We wrote a blog post detailing how we are handling the submissions going forward, alongside some other details:
August 2021
Applications recorded willingness to buy future land, rather than completed purchases. Land was not implemented in the later playable build.
Thank you guys for your continuous patience in regards to the community land sale. We have evaluated and ranked all your submissions and we will have information on the purchasing process (and a little something extra) very soon! Until then, watch this space
6 December 2021
Rob Pardo and Dennis Fong joined as advisers as well as investors. No amount was disclosed. The studio said its community was 200,000 strong and had grown 1,981% that year.
March 2022
Announced alongside a partnership with GameStop. The studio also decided to drop Unity and build its own engine for browser access, going through several attempts before settling on the one it shipped.
18 July 2024
Six days after the closed Prologue beta began. The studio ran a run of airdrop campaigns through partner questing portals that month.
The wait is OVER! Our Beta is now OPEN TO ALL! It is time to explore and battle your way through Solarwood!
August 2024
The third network the game had run on. Mark Laursen said it would improve how players controlled in-game assets and simplify onboarding.
2 December 2024
Six years after the announcement. Land ownership, the thing buyers had paid for since 2021, was not in the build and was said to be coming later.
The Wait is Over - Early Access is Here! Loot, grind, and stake your claim. Bugs? For sure. It's Early Access. Chaos? Absolutely. Fun? Guaranteed. Gear up. Dive in. Start your legend today. This is the beginning of everything.
11 April 2025
A one-line post with no bearing on the state of the project. Nothing followed it, and the closure six weeks later was never announced there.
Sorry...not sorry.
21 May 2025
The notice went up on the game's website and in a Discord server whose channels had been wiped, and said the servers would go offline that day. Reports date the announcement between 20 and 22 May 2025; discussion of it on X begins on 21 May.
How it ended
Ran out of money
Bright Star Studios ended development in May 2025, a little under six months after the game reached early access, saying it had been unable to secure the funding needed to continue. The servers went offline the same day and the Discord channels were closed. Land ownership, which players had been buying since 2021, had still not been implemented.
Still alive
Open spot
Ember Sword is gone. Is your RPG still running?
Spotlight your project here.
Sources
26 sources behind this page.
- 1Bright Star closes down MMORPG Ember Sword due to insufficient funding · BlockchainGamer.biz (Steel Media) · May 2025
- 2Ember Sword · Bright Star Studios (embersword.com, retrieved after the shutdown)
- 3Ember Sword · Delisted Games · May 2025 · user-editable
- 4Ember Sword shuts down after raising millions, joins a growing list of 2025 web3 game collapses · Esports Insider · May 2025
- 5Ember Sword: EMBER Token · Etherscan
- 6Ember Sword Is Shutting Down After Raising Over $11 Million Selling Land · Game Rant (Valnet) · May 2025
- 720+ Industry execs and influencers join Bright Star Studios, creator of P2E MMORPG Ember Sword, as investors in a deal led and structured by BITKRAFT Ventures · Games Press (release issued by Bright Star Studios and BITKRAFT Ventures) · Dec 2021
- 8LinkedIn profile of Mark Laursen · LinkedIn (self-published profile, viewed by a person) · user-editable
- 9LinkedIn profile of Sage Durain · LinkedIn (self-published profile, viewed by a person) · user-editable
- 10LinkedIn profile: Joris Huijbregts - humanfeedback.ai | LinkedIn · LinkedIn, as shown in Brave Search API results (self-published profile) · user-editable
Show 16 moreShow fewer
- 11Ember Sword to Move from Immutable X to Mantle Network · NFT Plazas
- 12Crypto MMORPG Ember Sword shuts down despite $203 million land pledge · PCGamesN (Network N Media) · May 2025
- 13Bright Star Studios secures $2M investment ahead of Ember Sword's first land sale on May 27th · PR Newswire (release issued by Bright Star Studios) · May 2021
- 14Most recent posts from @PlayEmberSword · twitterapi.io
- 15Search of @PlayEmberSword posts, 1 May to 5 June 2025 (no results) · twitterapi.io
- 16Search of @PlayEmberSword posts, August to early September 2021 · twitterapi.io
- 17Search of @PlayEmberSword posts, July 2024 · twitterapi.io
- 18Search of @PlayEmberSword posts, mid-July to early August 2021 · twitterapi.io
- 19Search of X for Ember Sword shutdown discussion, 19 to 24 May 2025 · twitterapi.io
- 20X account record for @PlayEmberSword · twitterapi.io
- 21X account lookup: @jjahuijbregts · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 22X account lookup: @LorenRoosendaal · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 23X account lookup: @MarkLaursen · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 24X search: @PlayEmberSword posts mentioning @LorenRoosendaal or @jjahuijbregts · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 25X search: @PlayEmberSword posts mentioning its founders · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 26Ember Sword · Wikipedia · user-editable
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.