https://www.gog.com/forum/general/realms_beyond_in_limbo "RB is not currently being worked on because the business manager / level designer who owns 50% of the company & was supposed to be finding the game a publisher basically abandoned the project in late 2020. This year he has been unresponsive when Hobgoblin42 the programmer (other 50% owner) contacted him with anything pertaining to the company. Unfortunately as 50% owner they require his approval to sign with a publisher or make any business decisions (he could legally shut down any attempts to sell anything related to RB).
Ceres is expected to go bankrupt very soon. Why? The company received a portion of a government grant in 2019. But they are expected to show progress and release a finished product. Since they cannot, Ceres is required to pay back what they've received... as some of the money has been spent, the company will be forced to declare bankruptcy. Then assets & IP of the game will be auctioned off to pay down company debts. The programmer personally owns the RB game engine so he will retain that no matter what.
After bankruptcy, the programmer and the lead writer plan to form a new company and attempt to buy the assets back with personal funds. If all goes well, the programmer and writer will resume work on the project with the new plan of first making smaller adventure modules that can be made in a relatively short time period with a small budget. These would be standalone stories (similar to some of the premium Neverwinter Nights modules). They will give the small module/s to RB backers and sell to anyone else interested. If it sells well, then they will probably make some more small modules, with the eventual goal of resuming work on the larger "Ashes of the Fallen" game as originally pitched.
If they are not able to get back the RB assets & IP from the auction, then they still hope to create a new game project with the RB engine. It would likely still be similar in many ways (turn-based party cRPG with 3.5e rules). But obviously this would be a major setback as they'd have to commission or acquire new art, music, etc. and start from scratch with the lore & world-building.
So is the game cancelled? Vaporware? Call it what you'd like. For now, I'd call it development limbo or Hell. We'll hopefully get more definite news later this year.
As the lead writer said on the RB Discord channel:
It's not "cancelled". Nobody sat down and made the decision to stop development on the game. One owner is unresponsive and his actions interfere with the company's work, but Hob and me are still willing to keep working on the game and finish up something releasable, even if it's just a smaller module for the start. Were it not for the other owner, we would resume development part-time right away."
