Draugoth
Gold Member
An Update About Masks of Power
Hello, Bionicle fans. For the past eight years, Team Kanohi has been at work creating the Bionicle video game of our dreams. That project has taken many shapes during that time, from Masks of Power: Legacy, to Trials of the Great Spirit, and ultimately, to BIONICLE: Masks of Power as you see it ...
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For the past eight years, Team Kanohi has been at work creating the Bionicle video game of our dreams. That project has taken many shapes during that time, from Masks of Power: Legacy, to Trials of the Great Spirit, and ultimately, to BIONICLE: Masks of Power as you see it today.
We've been transparent about the hardships our team has faced over the past year as we've worked to release the first look at BIONICLE: Masks of Power: the FREE THE BAND demo. After many years of hard work, our team was in the final stages of bugfixing and polishing for the demo's release. We had planned to shadowdrop the demo on August 10th, 2025.
Unfortunately, it seems that will no longer happen. The LEGO Group has asked our team to shut down our project in its entirety, and remove BIONICLE: Masks of Power from the public eye.
Although we're unable to release the demo, we wanted to share a complete video walkthrough of the entire demo in its current state. Please keep in mind that the demo still had 3 months of polish to undergo before launch, meaning that the footage contains many known issues. However, we are still incredibly proud of what our team has accomplished, and wanted to take this last chance to share it with all of you.
Why are you being shut down now?
BIONICLE: Masks of Power has been in development for over eight years. During that entire time, we've made an effort to ensure our project was in good standing with the LEGO Group, carefully following the LEGO Group's Fair Play guidelines. We have never charged our fans a single cent for the game's development, and have put disclaimers that clearly label our project as fan-made on our website, Steam page, and every trailer for the game. The LEGO Group has even publicly endorsed similar fan-made games, such as Bionicle: Quest for Mata Nui on their official Bits N' Bricks Podcast.
Unfortunately, it seems like the LEGO Group's stance on fan-created media has changed. While we can only speculate as to the exact reason why they have asked us to remove the game at this time, what we suspect is that our project was too easy to mistake for an official product. At the time of writing, searching "Bionicle game" on Google lists the Steam page for BIONICLE: Masks of Power within the first couple of links. An average person seeing our game for the first time could easily think that it was an official game at first glance. And no amount of disclaimers we could put up would be able to change that.
What's next for Team Kanohi?
We've spent years building an incredibly passionate and talented team of developers. We've put untold amounts of time, effort, and love into creating this game, and we're not about to let it all go to waste.
Our plan is to take everything we've learned through creating Masks of Power and use that knowledge and experience as the foundation of a brand-new, original game. Currently codenamed Project Rustbound, our team has already begun brainstorming concepts for a new, original world that we get the chance to build ourselves. We can't wait to take everything that we've learned through working on this game and use it to make something entirely our own. We're still in the concept phase for Project Rustbound, so it may be a while before we have more to share about the game.
And with this drastic new undertaking for our team, we'll of course need a new name. We're proud to announce that Team Kanohi is now Unmasked Games, an independent game studio.
From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has supported us over the long journey to get where we are today. We've grown from just a couple of Bionicle fans trying to make the type of game we wished we had as kids into a fully-fledged independent game studio. And the only reason we've been able to grow this much is through all of your support and love. Thank you.
This has been heartbreaking news for our entire team, but we're also incredibly excited about what the future has in store, and for what we'll get the chance to create next. We hope that you're all just as excited as we are.
For the final time…
May the Great Spirit guide you.
