Human Element on "hiatus" as Robotoki shuts down

UPDATE 10.15PM GMT: Robotoki founder Robert Bowling has posted a video showing all of the stuff, he told us, he never got to show. It's below.

ORIGINAL STORY 5.15PM GMT: Former Call of Duty creative strategist Robert Bowling has shut down his studio, Robotoki, and the ambitious first-person shooter it was working on, Human Element, is currently on hiatus.

"This week we have ceased operations at Robotoki and the development of Human Element is on hiatus," Bowling said in a statement to Eurogamer. "We were actively negotiating a new publishing deal for the premium version of Human Element but unfortunately I was unable to continue to self-fund development until a deal was finalised."

This is in keeping with what Bowling said in November, when he noted that the game would no longer be free-to-play and thus its publishing deal with Nexon was cancelled. Bowling said he was working with another publisher on signing the game, but it appears that this was taking too long.

Human Element has been in development since 2012 and it wasn't until The Game Awards last month that the developer showed off any footage of the title in a not-quite-gameplay video using in-game graphics, as you can watch below. We spoke at length with Bowling about Human Element back in 2012.

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