It looks like three from a zat for Stargate Resistance, as Cheyenne Mountain has stopped selling the game and announced that the servers will be going offline on January 15, 2011.

The tale of Stargate's foray into the realm of videogames is long and murky. More than two years ago, Stargate Worlds began taking beta applications, but the game sputtered amidst ugly recriminations and, eventually, some rather confusing legal battles. Just when it seemed that all was lost, SG Worlds publisher Cheyenne Mountain confused everyone by taking the wraps off of Stargate: Resistance, a team-based, third-person online shooter that it did actually manage to get out the door. Worlds, meanwhile, appeared dead in the water as Cheyenne Mountain's assets were taken over by two new companies launched by former employees, although they were ordered returned earlier this month.

But that seemingly happy ending to a messy situation is evidently too little, too late to do anyone any good. A message posted on the Stargate: Resistance website indicates that the game will be gone for good in January. "On November 16, 2010, the License Agreement between Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, Inc. and MGM Interactive, Inc. expired," it says. "As a result, Cheyenne will no longer be able to offer Stargate Resistance for sale to new customers." On the upside, the servers are being maintained until January 15, 2011, to give Stargate fans who did buy the game a chance to squeeze in as much of it as they can before everything goes dark.

What this means for Stargate Worlds isn't yet known, as Cheyenne Mountain founder Gary Whiting, who was ousted as CEO amid allegations of shenanigans, said the Resistance license was separate from Worlds, although at the time he apparently meant to reassure everyone that Resistance would be alright because it wasn't part of the Worlds train wreck. A die-hard optimist might suggest that this isn't necessarily the end of the line for Cheyenne and the Stargate games: Whiting was "cautiously optimistic" that he'd be able to renegotiate the license with MGM after he took back control of the game and the closure message ends with a promise of "more information as it becomes available." It's also impossible to overlook the remarkable resilience of Cheyenne Mountain, which was reportedly having trouble paying its employees as far back as December 2008.

On the other hand, emails sent to Cheyenne Mountain and its Firesky and Dark Comet divisions all bounced. That's generally not a good sign.

via: Big Download