No, this game was never abandoned. The big update (including new engine version) just took a bit time. If you are interested in the reason for the delay please click on the link which you can find along with the patchnotes here:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/265950/announcements/detail/670303337215740579

The patch is not yet on GOG but it will arrive here asap according to the devs.

Good to know. Thanks for the info and link, MarkoH01!

Thanks, this is great news, i have been wanting to play and continue this game on Oculus so bad. so glad the patch will come to gog too, I was almost give up waiting for gog update and almost want to buy the steam version

Not so good news (directly from the devs) regarding the update but I still wanted to tell you so that you all can see that the update will come to GOG and that there is a reason that it is still not here yet. Also you can see that this was not Whitepapergames fault:

...unfortunately Unreal Engine moved their save game data locations between engine updates. This means that the patch no longer knows where the save game data is and doesn't see it as there. We've been in touch with Epic and Martin (our programmer) is currently trying to figure out how to get the game to detect old save game data .... he is working on the solution....


But hey, we waited so long - what are a few days or maybe weeks. Of course I will keep you inform whenever I got interesting news regarding this. I do trust Whitepapergames completely and working with them while doing the German translation was amazing. So please don't lose your faith. :)

thanks for reply Marko, and also thanks for helping such as great game dev with your translation. Yes, I will keep waiting for the patch in gog, Can't wait to visit this game on oculus again.

Things like this happen, but it's always better to know when it does. Glad to hear that they are doing what they can to make it happen. Thanks again, MarkoH01!

Unfortunately just a tiny update and a little bit of explanation - directly from the devs:

"So sorry for the late reply! It's been a busy one here before Christmas. Most of the studio are breaking today but myself and the programmer are going to try and put a few days in next week to try and get this patch out. It's just this one save game issue which technically wouldn't be an issue with someone starting a fresh game but if anyone has an existing game with a 'delay' saveded via some gameplay scripting, it could break the game. It's just taking a lot of going through line by line (literally) in the game code and replacing any of the delays. It's not a super complicated progress, but it's extremely time consuming and tedious. I'll be sure to let you know when I have an update!"

And never forget that they also do work on their second game at the same time which hopefully will be as amazing as their first one :)

Thanks for the continued updates, my friend! And an extra "thank you" to the devs for working on this even over the holidays. If I didn't already own this game, I would definitely buy it now in support of their dedication. I will definitely be on the lookout for their next game for sure!

Thank you for your understanding. I feared somebody could start to not believe in the patch anymore and I also thought that posting such mesages from the devs here may prevent such thoughts from happening. As I said multiple times: the devs are just great but they are also only a few with another game in development and a new programmer. So for me it's always surprising that Pete is replying to my mails only minutes after I wrote them.They never try to ignore their fans and this makes me believe in them!

Here is a new years update:

"Happy New Year...The first week back in the studio can be a busy one but I’m just about organised now and ready to tackle this troublesome patch! ... Our opens are to revert back to the current engine that the game is released on re-fix all the bugs (which should take as long since we know how to fix them), patch, and then re-update the engine and patch again. We’re hoping this will solve all the issues but it’s going to be an on-going process. The frustrating thing is that everytime we want to compile and test the build it takes 2-3 hours on our programmers PC and we don’t have extra hardware in the studio so he’s sat there doing nothing. This means that we also have to be really clever with our time.
Anywaaaaay...rest assured we will keep working on it until everything is resolved"

(I have excluded some parts of the mail were Pete adressed me personally in case you are wondering about the ...)

Thanks again for the updates, MarkoH1! It is very much appreciated!

O.K. guys, I have to confess. For a short moment I lost faith when I wrote two mails and did not receive any reply. Thinking that this may be it and the update would never arrive here I made a last attempt and wrote another mail. Luckily it got answered in great detail - explaining a lot. Obvioulsy my last two mails simply where overseen. In the reply Pete also mentions the upcoming game from Whitepapergames on which they also work at the moment - probably woth to follow the link. Here is what he said:

"We will definitely still patch Ether. It's not because we've dropped support but because we can't get the fixes we need to make the patch. As you know, the programmer from Ether One left after the PS4 release and that meant that our new programmer had to figure out all the code. The code was such that it coded us down a hole that we couldn't get out of to make the patch fix - if we were to patch now, it would lose everyone's save games and possibly cause people to have to re-download. We've tried to work with Epic to get a fix in the Unreal Engine but they recommended a fix would only make things worse - it's due to the save game files and persistent saving across levels. It's the reason why some people can platinum and others can't. There's not much on my end I can do apart from wait for our programmer to get time to fix it... Which is where our other big issue lies. We're still a small team with limited funds to make a game. We need to keep moving forward and can't create a game without a programmer, we also can't afford to hire one, currently. So our programmer has been working hard on getting content together for our new game (you may have seen announced this week here: http://occupation-game.com/ ). We have a consumer show coming up in London next week which is Rezzed and once that it done and we have the gameplay systems we need to allow the rest of the team to do their work, we'll move back onto patching Ether, which isn't a small fix - it's rewriting the save game system in a way that won't break people's games. It's an incredibly hard situation to be in as a studio but I hope people respect the fact that we need to continue working and creating games to survive. A programmer is one of the most vital roles on a team and the only one who can patch for us. We also only have 1. It's hard to prioritise the time but this was needed in order to continue developing as a studio. Please rest assured every time we see a bug report it's a terrible feeling, I hate knowing that someone is frustrated with our game that they paid their hard earned money for and we will support it as soon as we're able to. Your point about us losing existing fans is an important one - we want them to keep believing in the quality we wish to achieve and that's the biggest thing letting Ether down at the moment."

Edit: In case you are as curious as I for the next game, feel free to vote here to bring it to GOG as well:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/the_occupation

I really don't get it!. The sticky thread says EOR was updated to 1.04 in 2014.
This thread, started 2016, deals with an UPCOMING 1.04 version, which still seems to be pending in 2017??

If you look very closely you'll see that the sticky thread is NOT talking about Ether One Redux but about Ether One. In 2014 Ether One Redux was not even released. So yes, unfortunately Ether One Redux still has not updated on GOG yet.

Whitepapergames second game is about to be released end of 2017 or at the beginning of 2018 according to their site but since there was no word on the Ether One Redux I asked them again. They have not forgotten and they replied one day later...

"Unfortunately, as guessed, no news on the patch. Right now, we're trying to pursue a publishing deal to get The Occupation some funding. Once we've achieved that, we can dedicate a programmer onto Ether. We're hoping to do this over the summer and at the same time get Ether out onto other platforms so we can put a big focus into it. Nothing confirmed yet but as soon as we get back onto it I'll be sure to drop you an email to see if there's anything you'd like adjusting also!"

Nice to read at least some progress regarding the idea of one programmer working on Ether only whenever they've found a publisher. And you can see that they are not finished with Ether One yet if they want to get it out on other platforms as well. It's not what I really wanted to hear but it's more than "nothing new" at all.

But please keep in mind that the original Ether One is still completely playable and if you like Ether One as much as I did I want to inform you that Whitepapergames now also offers T-Shirts for both Ether One and Occupation. Maybe you're interested - they are listed here.

Thanks a lot, although unfortunate!