Following up on a previous report, Xerxes ‘Jarvis’ Sangco’s involvement with Tactical Assault VR is ending after news of his 2020 arrest and subsequent criminal conviction came to light.
Earlier this week, we covered Tactical Assault VR developer HammerFire Interactive losing its publishing agreement with 2080 Games & a working relationship with Ghosts of Tabor developer Combat Waffle Studios. This followed the VR community being made aware of lead developer Sangco’s criminal history.
The nature of the arrest touches on a potentially sensitive topic, so rather than summarize it here, we invite anyone curious to read our prior article here:
Tactical Assault VR Partners Cut Ties After Disclosure of Past Legal Conviction
Tactical Assault VR’s partners dissolve their relationships with the game following the news of one of its lead developers’ arrest in 2020. CONTENT WARNING for the full article.
In light of this and the community’s response to the news, HammerFire developer ‘Puddle’ issued the following statement on Discord. A shortened version was also posted to Tactical Assault’s Steam and Meta Horizon storefront listings:
In light of recently released news and documents regarding the game owner and developer, JARVIS, this project has taken a fatal hit in reputation and confidence. The outrage of the community was fierce and justified, though I would urge everyone to cease any death threats to JARVIS or his family.
While the actions of JARVIS are indefensible, we do not want this to be the end of the game, and we are doing everything we can to come up with an acceptable solution for the community that would allow the game to continue development. After many talks between different parties, we have come up with the following changes:
As of now JARVIS is stepping down as game developer, thus ending his involvement with Tactical Assault VR’s development, leadership and decision making processes.
Ownership of the Discord server is transferred over to Puddle, allowing JARVIS to exit this community.
The Tactical Assault VR project will continue under the leadership of Puddle and Black Canto and without the involvement of a publisher.
There will be a delay until the next game update will come out while the handover of project development and ownership are in progress.
The game will of course remain playable during this transition period.
Planned future DLCs will be put on hold in favor of expanding on existing DLCs.
Canto and I are confident that these changes will allow us to keep the game going and allow us much more creative and directional freedom to secure the game’s future. The game’s future is currently uncertain at best, but we will do everything in our power to come back from this tragedy in due time, and we will continue working on this game for as long as we can.
Mod support for the game will unfortunately be delayed due to the restructuring that is taking place, but is absolutely something that is still planned.
We hope that these changes will help us regain the confidence of the players and the community, and we hope that you choose to stay with us and help us on this uphill battle to save this game.
The post also included a ‘thank you’ message from Sangco directly to the game’s community.
We have been monitoring the VR community’s response since the news broke. There have been multiple reviews from upset players on Steam and Quest swearing off the game due to Sangco’s involvement. The Discord community has been fairly divided, with some saying that they would continue to support and play the game, even before the above statement was issued.
One thing not entirely clear right now is ownership of the game itself. If Sangco fully owns the legal rights to Tactical Assault VR, as the ‘owner’ title attributed to him in the statement would imply, the statement does not specify that those rights are being transferred to another party. The only property changing hands is the Discord itself.
However, if Sangco retains the legal rights and ownership to Tactical Assault VR, then future revenue from the game still goes to him, after platform fees and other associated costs like server hosting. It is very possible this is also underway, but transferring ownership of an intellectual property is a legal matter that takes considerably longer than Discord ownership.
That said, none of that is mentioned in the statement. We will continue monitoring this story for any further developments.
