Fable Legends has officially been canned and developer Lionhead Studios will be shut down, Microsoft announced in a blog post this morning. Fable Legends was poised to be a free, multiplayer-focused, fantasy-action game -- and a fairly dramatic departure from previous installments in the series. Microsoft announced Fable Legends in 2013 and it was supposed to launch in late 2015, though in December it was delayed into 2016.

Lionhead is based in the United Kingdom and it's responsible for franchises such as Black & White and (of course) Fable. Famed game designer Peter Molyneux founded Lionhead in 1997 and led it for more than a decade, even once Microsoft acquired the studio in 2006. Molyneux left in 2012 after finishing Fable: The Journey.