The Smoke Room Cancellation

Hello everyone,

Due to multiple incidents over the past five years, it is no longer possible for Echo Project to continue the development of The Smoke Room, and we have come to the difficult decision to cancel it. George, the lead writer for TSR, will be creating his own visual novel.

Because TSR was conceived in late 2017, with multiple parties contributing ideas and work while not under contract, there are still ongoing negotiations regarding the rights to the assets. This includes the title of the visual novel, which was conceived by another member of the project. If you were one of these contributors and would like to discuss this, please contact either George or Echo Project here on Patreon through DMs.

Echo Project would like to make it clear that all characters and stories in TSR no longer have any relation to Echo Project, or its visual novels and we no longer consider it as part of Echo. From this point on, anything said or created by George are his own ideas, and will have no association with Echo Project. Any claims of George being a founding member of Echo Project, or that he made any contributions to The Smoke Room pre-2019, are false.

We apologize to all of our supporters who invested time and funds into this project. The reason behind this decision is due to multiple, interpersonal conflicts over the past five years between George and other members of Echo Project that created a hostile and abusive environment. While we here at Echo Project understand the gravity of cancelling a project late into development, we also came to the conclusion that to continue this relationship would make an already unhealthy situation much worse. Despite a recent incident on twitter between George and team Cienie, we want to make it clear that Team Cienie was not at all involved in this decision, nor was that incident the main reason for the cancellation.

Echo Project is still continuing, of course. Currently we have updates for Khemia and Glory Hounds at near, or full completion and will be released in the coming days. We again apologize for the bad news, and thank you all for reading.

-Echo Project