All it takes is one person to bring an entire operation crashing to a halt, and that’s exactly what’s happened to My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic, the fan-created game based on the immensely popular Hasbro cartoon reboot series. As independent developer group Mane6 sadly reports, an early version of their game has been leaked to the Internet, and they’re not happy about it.

As a result, the entire QA (quality assurance) side of the development has been shut down, although the game itself will continue its development towards the final product.

As Mane6 states in an open letter on their official website, one of their QA tester broke a non-disclosure agreement, forcing them to go on a “closed development cycle” that will undoubtedly take a lot more time to finish:

The unfinished version of Fighting is Magic is, needless to say, unsupported. We won’t answer any questions relative to it, we won’t give technical support to it, we won’t discuss mechanics or graphic details from it, given its status as a leaked, unfinished, internal testing build, which happened to be leaked just right before a major update was pushed to our now closed QA test program.

Although Mane6 is “very disappointed” in the people responsible for the leak—and by extension, everyone else who’s spreading the unfinished copy around—they’re still going to keep plugging away at the game in secret. Currently, two more characters are undergoing some polish: Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy (ironically, the two flight-capable ponies of the main six).

For now, Fighting is Magic will be going on a closed development cycle. No further QA, Alpha, Beta or testing program will be started or maintained until we have the remaining two characters done for the initial build. In addition BSUs will be cancelled, and no major content-related updates to the website will be forthcoming until further notice, while we at Mane6 deal with this situation and discuss changes for the future of the project.

It’s a shame, because this is easily one of the best fan-made fighting game projects that’s been in the works during the last couple of years. Hopefully, the development cycle isn’t hampered too badly.

You’ll all have to excuse me for a few minutes. It’s just—I think I need some time to sigh in the corner, wistfully.

Source: Mane6