The ambitious project Paradise (also known as Paradise XRPL) from Ultra Games unexpectedly made it to Steam's most wishlisted games, reaching 51st place by wishlist additions, yet failed to appear on the platform by its promised release date.

Initially announced in November 2024 as a free-to-play online open-world action game inspired by GTA Online, The Sims, and metaverse concepts, the project promised: a living city with AI-driven NPCs, an advanced character customization system, and a cryptocurrency-based economy—all powered by Unreal Engine 5.

Instead of a full-fledged Steam release on April 2, the developers settled for closed testing, accessible only to a select few. The official launch was postponed indefinitely, while the game unexpectedly debuted on the obscure NFT platform GGEM. This sparked outrage: the community uncovered asset plagiarism from GTA 5 and Unreal Engine, as well as unauthorized use of branded elements.

The situation is further exacerbated by the developers' bold claims of "800,000 players," unsupported by actual data, along with inflated promises of "phenomenal popularity" that resemble marketing tricks rather than reality.

All of this bears an uncanny resemblance to The Day Before saga, which also featured grand ambitions—an open world with multiplayer, survival mechanics, and numerous gameplay systems. From its very announcement, it was suspected of blatantly using stolen assets. The result was a spectacular failure, with the released product barely qualifying as an alpha version, let alone a complete game.

Main image: store.steampowered.com

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