Dean Hall has mentioned that he is no longer working on, “Ion” and neither is his founded company, RocketWerkz.
Ion was announced back in 2015 during E3, where Dean Hall expressed news that he was working on it. Ion was set to be an MMO title that found players travelling the universe in an attempt to colonise it.
I remember seeing people online discussing the title on forums and pages, wondering if this was going to fall into the same fate as DayZ. DayZ was originally a mod created by Dean Hall and ended up with Hall finding his way to Bohemia Interactive to create a standalone version of the title. That was back in 2012, it was then released onto Early Access on PC in 2013. Now we’re in 2017 and the title is still in Early Access. There were announcements back in 2014 that the title would find its way to PS4, and then in 2015 at E3, there were talks that there would be an Xbox One release. So far nothing has happened.
Eurogamer ran an interview with Dean Hall and he confirmed that neither he, or his development company are working on Ion.
“We’re not actively working on Ion, no. I am not involved in that, no. Nor is RocketWerkz studio in New Zealand.” – Dean Hall (Eurogamer Interview)
There was a lot of buzz about Ion, and a reveal trailer during the 2015 E3 got people even more hopeful. RocketWerkz, while not pushing any more Ion news out did in fact start pushing out titles, but none were Ion. One was a VR title called, “Out of Ammo”, then they announced an upcoming multiplayer title without a name, but it wasn’t Ion, and apparently Dean Hall is to be showing off a new game at EGX Rezzed that will feature a playable demo on the show floor.
Source: Gamesindustry.biz
It’s the curse of Space Station 13; people play it and say “This is amazing, I wish someone would modernise this!” and then when they try it just all falls flat.