In September 2014, Double Fine announced that they were going to bring
Spacebase DF-9 out of
early access status, and add features to make the game a full commercial release, due to a lack of sales for the game during the early access period. After the commercial release, Double Fine will release part of the source code and no new features will be added, but Double Fine will still be offering support of the game and making bug fix releases. The news was met with controversy, with some fans expressing anger over the fact that the game would not continue development, and some developers questioning whether a failure by a well known developer to successfully use the early access model would tarnish that model for other developers. The release of v1.0 commenced on October 27, 2014, simultaneously with release of
Lua source code. The
retail version included a tutorial mode, goals screen and bugfixes. After the release of v1.0 on November 21, 2014, twelve employees were laid off including the programmer and project lead JP LeBreton. On December 16, 2014 Greg Rice posted on the official technical support forums stating that there were no further plans for
patches and there was no team assigned to the project. Double Fine officially
ended support for
Spacebase and ceased development of the game in May 2015. Part of the game's
source code was released to the public under the
CPAL open-source license, and since then, fans have worked to continue the game's development and support. The game's community has provided
bug fixes and extensions to the game based on Double Fine's documented plans, and the first
community patch was released in October 2015. The second unofficial patch was released in February 2016. ==Reception==