An open-world, third-person Bionicle fan sport that had plenty of hype locally and which has been in growth for practically a decade has allegedly been canceled by the Lego Group only a few months earlier than the undertaking’s first massive demo was set to launch.
Bionicle was a preferred line of buildable motion figures created by the Lego group in 2001. The road was the primary authentic transmedia franchise created by Lego, that includes a deep quantity of lore and tales advised in comics, books, and animated motion pictures. It was deliberate to run for 20 years however, as a result of low gross sales, was led to 2010. It was revived in 2015, however previous followers didn’t embrace the reboot and the revival led to 2016. Regardless of a decade having handed since Lego made new Bionicle units, followers nonetheless love the bizarre franchise that includes bio-organic tremendous robots and sci-fi magic. And for the previous eight years, a rising group of followers often known as Staff Kanohi have been creating their dream Bionicle sport, Masks of Energy, however have been pressured to cease after Lego demanded it.
On Might 17, Staff Kanohi introduced that the Lego Group requested that the staff shut down the undertaking fully and take away Masks of Energy from the web.
“We’ve been clear concerning the hardships our staff has confronted over the previous 12 months as we’ve labored to launch the primary take a look at Bionicle: Masks of Energy: the ‘FREE THE BAND’ demo,” mentioned Staff Kanohi. “After a few years of onerous work, our staff was within the closing levels of bugfixing and sharpening for the demo’s launch. We had deliberate to shadowdrop the demo on August tenth, 2025.”
“Sadly, it appears that evidently will now not occur. The LEGO Group has requested our staff to close down our undertaking in its entirety, and take away Bionicle: Masks of Energy from the general public eye.”
Regardless of not with the ability to launch the demo or end the sport, Staff Kanohi has put out a two-hour video exhibiting off the unfinished demo for the Bionicle sport. The group says it’s nonetheless “extremely proud” of what it has made and I’ve to agree. This seems superior, and I’m not even a Bionicle fan.
So why did the Lego Group shut down this undertaking? In line with the dev staff, they’ve been in touch with the corporate for years and have adopted all the guidelines surrounding fan-created content material. Masks of Energy was going to be launched without spending a dime, and included disclaimers that made it clear this was a fan undertaking. Lego has additionally formally known as out and supported different Bionicle fan video games prior to now. Nonetheless, it looks like Masks of Energy was beginning to look too official for Lego attorneys.
“Sadly, it looks like the LEGO Group’s stance on fan-created media has modified. Whereas we are able to solely speculate as to the precise purpose why they’ve requested us to take away the sport at the moment, what we suspect is that our undertaking was too straightforward to mistake for an official product,” mentioned the devs. “On the time of writing, looking ‘Bionicle sport’ on Google lists the Steam web page for Bionicle: Masks of Energy inside the first couple of hyperlinks.”
“A median particular person seeing our sport for the primary time may simply assume that it was an official sport at first look. And no quantity of disclaimers we may put up would be capable of change that.”
It’s not all unhappy information, although, because the staff behind the now-cancelled fan sport has introduced plans to develop a brand new sport—Mission Rustbound—constructed off the work they put into Masks of Power. Hopefully this undertaking will get to see the sunshine of day.
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