Game designer American McGee stated, that Electronic Arts not only canceled the new part of Alice: Alice Asylum, but also refused to license it to him, leaving the author without access to intellectual property. On his personal blog, the developer thanked fans for their financial and moral support and asked to “move on,” because the continuation of the series will never be released. He also advised me to address all questions, complaints and claims not to him, but to EA.
Back in April of this year American McGee announced, that there will not be a final part of the American McGee’s Alice trilogy. Before this, the game designer, together with a team of like-minded people, worked on Alice Asylum for several years and prepared “Design Bible“of 414 pages of vision for the future game. The project was shown to EA in order to begin working with the Virtuos Games studio in the future.
The publisher, for its own reasons, decided not to finance the development and refused to transfer the IP into the hands of the author. As Electronic Arts stated: “The company considers Alice an important part of the overall game catalog and is not ready to transfer the rights to it.”
American McGee was “emotionally destroyed” and clarified that he was not yet ready to start new projects or get involved in video games in general. Moreover, according to his statement, even if he wanted to, he would not be able to return to the series or make a spiritual sequel due to IP restrictions. But everything is in the hands of the fans. According to the game designer, Alice Asylum could someday come to life with the help of the Design Bible and artificial intelligence.
