Hi all residents - we’ve missed you!
Amazing news on the way up the elevator!
After almost four years of uncertainty, we can finally share the good news: Invisible Walls has regained the rights to First Class Trouble and we’re once again in full control of the game’s future. We know many of you have wondered what happened behind the scenes and why the game stopped receiving updates. Perhaps one day I will be able to tell the full story of it all, but the short version is simple: after our original release, a long series of publisher issues and financial complications left us unable to continue developing the game; even though the community remained strong, and us never losing our passion for it - the game was taken out of our hands. Like many small indie studios, we were learning as we went, sometimes naïve, always optimistic, and doing our best to keep the lights on. We built First Class Trouble from nothing - from a few people on welfare trying to make a multiplayer game that nobody thought would work - into something played by millions around the world.
When ownership and publishing rights later shifted hands, payments were delayed and our creative control became limited. Eventually, we had to make the difficult choice to pause development to protect the studio and its people. It was heartbreaking - but necessary to survive; and in the end our decisions are based on protecting the studio and its amazing employees. Those years were incredibly difficult for us. We poured everything we had into First Class Trouble - time, money, and heart - only to find ourselves in a frustrating situation where our baby was forcefully taken out of our hands. Payments were delayed (or most often never came), communication broke down, and we often felt powerless watching our own creation slip out of our hands by publishers with more leverage and power than us. It’s hard to describe how disheartening it is to fight for something you love while feeling taken advantage of by people who should’ve been your partners. Yet, through all of that, we never stopped believing that one day the game would come home again. In 2025, the situation finally changed. Our former publishing partners returned the rights to us out of the blue, and we immediately began rebuilding the game’s systems to keep it alive.
This was needed as the state of the game, when we were returned the rights, where that the game had just 3 weeks left before servers were shut down due to mismanagement from the previous rights-holder, but thanks to the incredible support of our backend partner, AccelByte, we have managed to save the servers and ensure that First Class Trouble could live on and we have started restructuring and refactoring a lot of the back-end code base.
So that was a little bit of backstory, without diving too deep into the specifics, but let's instead talk about some more cool stuff!
We’re back baby!
First Class Trouble is once again being maintained and updated by the original team. We’re currently upgrading the game from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, improving performance, stability, and compatibility for future platforms - ensuring that the game has a long life and continues to be playable.
Super exciting is also that new content is also in the works - including a new map that we think is super cool! It is still in the early stages, but it will have everything you could expect from our previous maps.
We are also working on various quality-of-life updates that will improve the game in different ways. Some we think could drastically change how the game is played and we believe this will open up the game for a lot more people.
We can’t give an exact date yet, but expect news way before 2026.
It is important to let everyone know that no matter how excited we are to have the title back, then we might not be working on the game forever, but our goal is to ensure that First Class Trouble remains playable and enjoyable for as long as possible - and maybe even pave the way for what comes next after this.
Thank you for sticking with us through the highs and lows. Your support and love for the game have meant everything. We’re proud to finally say: First Class Trouble is home again - where it belongs. – David
CEO, Invisible Walls