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PC Games (Games)

Myst Creator Closes Doors 112

ComputerSherpa writes "Cyan Worlds closed its doors today. Cyan was the creator of Myst, the game that was partially responsible for popularizing the CD-ROM format. Until it was recently overtaken by The Sims, the Myst series was the most popular computer game series of all time. The last game in the Myst series, End of Ages, is scheduled to be released September 20th by UbiSoft."
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Myst Creator Closes Doors

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  • Damn... (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrAndrews ( 456547 ) <mcm@1889.BOYSENca minus berry> on Friday September 02, 2005 @07:28PM (#13467602) Homepage
    I remember taking a tour of their "studio" way back in the early Myst days... I worked at a similar shop, and we'd been talking about doing stuff like that for months, and then BOOM! there it was... better than we could have imagined. They used all the common tools of the day in fantastic ways... after I got that game, I spent the rest of my workdays playing it. Research, y'know. But they weren't just crazy minds, they were very nice guys, too.

    Then again, it's not like they've died or anything... but it's still sad to see them go.
  • by Seumas ( 6865 )
    It was the game that mostly women played and got addicted to, before it was replaced by the other most popular game ever made that mostly women play and get addicted to (The Sims).

    I sure wish the game industry would stop being so sexist and start focusing on games that women would enjoy.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      I wouldnt call it sexist, rather ignorance. Or maybe passively sexist. There's a long way to go though, I'm a male developer in the game industry who shares the same feelings, but any slight suggestion of something more gender-friendly / anti-cheuvanistic gets me the strangest looks from my coworkers and I start fearing for my job. ("He's not one of us! We must be rid of him!")
      Sadly, right now it's just a bunch of grown up 8th graders running the show. :1
    • In case any of you are wondering if this guy has any idea what he is talking about, I googled it up and here it is http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3889773.stm [bbc.co.uk] Indeed a quarter of its players are female, according to publishers Ubisoft, which is a much higher proportion than most other video games.
      • My wifes two favorite game series for the PC are: MYST 1-4 and anything with word SIMS in it. She actually prefers the PS2 versions of the Sims due to the missions and the fact that they do not crash the way the PC versions do. She also helped Beta test Sims Online (it not her fault it sucks). She also love those Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing games on the Gamecube and GBA.
    • I think the industry needs to focus not on what women would enjoy, but on making games less obviously targeted at the young demographic.

      Characters in games are so often caricatures - men with lantern jaws and bulging biceps, women with cavernous cleavage and wasp waists. It'd be better to have people who actually look like you could meet them in the street.

      Women seem to react more negatively to stereotypes of women than men react to stereotypes of men. That drives them away from many games.
      • Have you looked at magazines targeted to women or ads targeted to women? The thin, attractive, large brested women in them do not appear to be driving them away.
        • Have you looked at the rise in cosmetic surgery in the last ten to twenty years? Or the way that increasingly more women feel unhappy with their physical form, even if they actually *are* slim and attractive?

          There are even reality TV shows now where people get cut up to make them look better. That's so sick and twisted that it's almost beyond comprehension.

          Is your point that it's good advertising practice to mutate women's bodies in a way that no women could possibly live up to (through extensive use of Pho
          • Do you think that violent games make people more violent?
            • Different issue, and you should have been able to perceive this difference.

              I'm talking about the prevalent culture that pervades all aspects of daily life, and how it portrays women and men. A subset of that culture is in video games, and because of the nature of graphics (not being necessarily based in reality) the images of women and men are even worse than you see on billboards.

              That's what I believe drives many people away from video games.

              It's absolutely nothing to do with violent games, but it's nice o
          • So how come people are getting fatter, faster?

            I don't see the follow through on the logic there.
            • You look for a single cause?

              Wow. That's brave.
              • So you're suggesting that the media and society are to blame for portraying an impossible body image to women. So why are so many getting so far these days at a record rate? Doesn't sound like they're feeling so pressed to fit that body image after all, huh? And if anything, society specifically DISLIKES people who have plastic surgery. You hear as many jokes about nosejobs, tummy tucks and face lifts than you do just plain being fat.

                Not to mention, I don't want to hear this whiney crap about what women are
        • Have you looked at magazines targeted to women or ads targeted to women? The thin, attractive, large brested women in them do not appear to be driving them away.

          I think you're confusing something: Playboy isn't targeted at women.

          Seriously though, there certainly are women's magazines containing picutres of slender, large-breasted women. However, they are mostly health and fashion/lifestyle magazines. If you're writing an article about how to shed some pounds, and you show a picture of a slender woman, t

          • It's human nature to respond to a pretty face, whether it belongs to the same or opposite sex. Marketers know that, which is why the only people you see on TV or in magazines are as attractive as possible. Video games are no exception.

            Those fashion magazines you dismiss are in fact quite popular, even with women who don't look like the ones on the cover. Cosmo had over 2 million [magazine.org] single-issue sales in the US in 2004, the most of any magazine. Check out their current cover [cosmomag.com] and tell me if that looks like many
        • Have you looked at magazines targeted to women or ads targeted to women? The thin, attractive, large brested women in them do not appear to be driving them away.

          Actually, although the ads show that sort of thing because it feeds into fear of inadequacy (sales!), the magazines targeted at them usually show small breasted women.

          It's one thing to sell a product by showing that it will enhance a woman. It's quite another to get her to willingly purchase monthly a magazine that constantly shows that she'
      • It'd be better to have people who actually look like you could meet them in the street.

        Really? Would Star Wars be a better movie if it was full of people you could meet in the street? Would Harry Potter be a more interesting book if it was full of people you could meet in the street? Would Desperate Housewives be a better TV show if it was full of people you could meet in the street?

        I think the point is that we can have both. We can have fantasy and reality. You can't just heretofore ban everything with

    • by Seumas ( 6865 )
      Aw, man. I was being sarcastic, but then everyone took me so seriously and had such interesting things to say that I almost feel guilty for having not been serious in the first place.

      My point really was that there's all this clammoring about how there are no female-friendly games, but then the two most popular games in history both happen to be extremely female-accessible and friendly and are made up of a huge population of female players.

      I have always felt that a game should be created for playability and
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Support Cyan: http://www.mystembassy.net/supportcyan.html [mystembassy.net]
  • Sigh... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Gadren ( 891416 )
    Being an avid Myst fan myself, I was hit hard by the collapse of Uru Live in February 2004, then the fact that Cyan seemed to deteriorate due to financial pressures...and now this. 'Tis a shame -- while I have nothing against violent videogames (I love Halo immensely), Myst was able to create a new kind of game. And the fan support has been amazing; the Myst community is one of the most closely-knit ones I've ever seen. Shorah, Cyan, and may the ending never be written.
  • by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <(rodrigogirao) (at) (hotmail.com)> on Friday September 02, 2005 @08:21PM (#13467801) Homepage
    It's sad to see them shut doors, but... if their purpose was to tell the story of Myst, and End of Ages is the last chapter of the saga, they have accomplished their mission. Acta est fabula, plaudite!
  • Its sad to see them go.

    Though this wasnt entirely unexpected. They put alot of money into URU only to have it never get off the ground.

    So they ended up relying on publishers to fund new projects, and most publishers won't fund a triple AAA adventure game.

    Its sad to see them go, but such is life.
  • As someone who used to be a heavy gamer and still plays in between programming and sleep, I have never played this series. I remember when it came out and have heard it mentioned a few times since then, but never thought it was popular. Anyone in the know mind telling what Myst was about, and why it was so popular?
    • You never thought it was popular? Back then it was the best-selling computer game ever! Check the Wikipedia article. [wikipedia.org]
    • Re:Myst, Popular? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It was popular because it was cerebral.

      A refreshing change from the usual hack and slash, reflexes had nothing to do with it.
    • Re:Myst, Popular? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As far as popularity, I'm pretty certain it held the title of largest selling game of all time for several years.

      It gained that popularity because it told an interesting story with very simple mechanics; two necessary ingredients for getting attention from the casual gamer audience (which makes up probably 80+% of the total gaming market).

      Personally I wasn't a big fan of the series. I prefered the adventure genre from Sierra and Lucasarts point of view, but you can't argue with it's success.
      • myst was a game that acturally made you think. unlike todays games where the main objective is listed for you. myst made you look for and remember what is going on (or write it in the supplyed journal if you actually bought the game) and you actually had to use ur brain.
  • > Until it was recently overtaken by The Sims, the Myst series was the
    > most popular computer game series of all time.

    I'm really struggling with this one, in terms of definitions. I'm not sure exactly how the word "popular", for instance, could be defined to make this true. Popular in terms of how many people have played it? No, that would be Solitaire/Freecell, hands down. Popular in terms of how many hours people have wasted on it? The Mario series probably has that sewn up, if you count it as
    • Myst would be _way_ down the list, far below Doom

      Myst, at its peak, was far more popular than Doom at its peak.
      • > Myst, at its peak, was far more popular than Doom at its peak.

        I have a pretty hard time believing that. Every gamer and 5% of the rest of the PC-owning world has a copy of at least one of the Doom games. I only ever actually met (IRL) *one* person who owned a copy of Myst.

        But, again, how do are we defining "more popular"? More people played it? They spent more hours on it? They liked it better? They talked about it more? What exactly are we talking about here? You're making an assertion, but it
        • Might be totally off-base, but try this page [nationmaster.com] and look at units sold. If you knock the games off the list that came out, say, after 2000, then it's a pretty decent standing.

          Of course, that was just the first hit I found after looking on Google, so it could be totally off.
        • I agree with your point that the definition of "popular" needs clarification. I personally am just going off my memory of the time, which is that, as you say, it seemed like every gamer and 5% of the rest of the PC-owning world had a copy of Doom 1. However, my memory is that maybe 10% of gamers but 50% of the rest of the PC-owning world had a copy of Myst 1.

          Googling seems to indicate that 3 million copies of Doom were sold, and 7 million copies of Myst were sold.
          • As far as Doom goes, keep in mind that it was released in a day where Shareware versions of it were readily available. People didn't have to purchase Doom in order to play it or to experience it. They could legally download the first episode from their local BBS. Just because they didn't buy it doesn't mean they didn't enjoy it. Myst, on the other hand, required a purchase to play, so the number of 7 million is probably about correct and reflects the number of people who played it. I would estimate tha
        • I have a pretty hard time believing that. Every gamer and 5% of the rest of the PC-owning world has a copy of at least one of the Doom games. I only ever actually met (IRL) *one* person who owned a copy of Myst.

          Myst was bought by non-gamers, which is precisely why it was so popular.

        • by Anonymous Coward
          > Every gamer and 5% of the rest of the PC-owning world has a copy of at least one of the Doom games.

          Oh ? Really ? I have a copy of myst, (and riven), but no Doom. Q3A, yes, but no doom. I know other people that have Myst. You only know hard-core games. Myst was one of the very very few games (like the Sims) that were playable by non-hard core gamers. Unlike mario.

          The myst demographic was older than the doom demographic, and mostly included non-gamers. I suspect that you are younger than I am (I am near
          • > You only know hard-core gamers

            No, actually, I only know one hard-core gamer. Most of the people I know who own Doom only own half a dozen PC games or so. The *one* person I know who owned Myst also had at the time, I think, Freecell and Encarta.

            A lot of people here are saying non-gamers bought Myst, but this must be non-gamers in some demographic I've never encountered. I know more non-gamers who own copies of the PC version of Wheel of Fortune than ones who have Myst. I know more non-gamers who ow
    • Most copies sold. Not so hard to come up with...
    • if you restrict it to just the PC platform, then we're probably back at Solitaire/Freecell again, but Myst would be _way_ down the list, far below Doom.

      What about restricting it to the MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows platforms and excluding games packaged with the operating system?

    • The biggest selling computer game ever is Super Mario brothers .. the Mario games are the biggest selling series by a wide margin .(Super Mario brothers sold 40 million in the USA alone ,, SMB3 sold 18 million or so and Super Mario 64 sold around 10 million)
    • I'm not sure exactly how the word "popular", for instance, could be defined to make this true.

      It's "most popular computer game series" as in "pc game series with most copies sold". For quite some time (still?), Myst was the PC game with the most copies sold.

    • No, it was the most popular game - in terms of units sold - of all time until The Sims broke that record.

      And, yes, the game was adored. You should check out the Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org].

      Again, the /. community needs to break out of the shell that it continually finds itself in. The world, not even the computing world for that matter, revolves around us. Look beyond your experience.

  • Could they open source it? I never played and wouldn't mind checking it out. Could it become abandonware so we could try it for free?
    • If you're talking about the original Myst, it was released long enough ago that you gan probably get it and two of its sequels for 15 bucks in a bargain bin package deal somewhere. Which is a good deal, considering the quantity and quality of gameplay you're getting. Also, if you've never played Myst, I suggest getting a copy of RealMyst, which is Myst translated into realtime 3D, with weather and everything. Very nice eye-candy.
    • The original Myst was written in HyperCard, which is an interpurated language, and it also used a closed source C custom color API for HyperTalk. In other words, even if they did release the source, it was written in an Apple IDE that was abandon many years ago and never made it to OS X, not to mention the color code compiled for the Mac 68k.
  • by Conspiracy_Of_Doves ( 236787 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @09:35PM (#13468121)
    But I have to say that I'm glad.

    They pretty much killed the adventure game genre. Before Myst, we had great adventure games from Sierra, LucasArts and a few other companies. Granted, they escaped the notice of the general population, but when Myst came along and became super popular, it became fixed in the minds of the populace as the definition of what an adventure game is supposed to be, and REAL adventure games were automatically regarded as 'too complex', and now it is nearly impossible to get them published (Sam & Max 2 and Full Throttle 2, anyone?)
    • The great adventure games from LucasArts came out AFTER Myst came out. You underestimate how long ago Myst came out.
      • What crack are YOU smoking? Myst came out in 1995. Maniac Mansion came out in 1988 or 1989. Day of the Tentacle about 1993. Secret of Monkey Island 1&2 came out in 1990 and 1992 respectively. The Grandparent is Absolutely correct. Myst killed the adventure genre. Post-Myst everybody started coming out with the crap prerendered 3D puzzle games with no Plot or Character. King's Quest Died. Space Quest Died. Quest for Glory sort of limped along a while, but the latest editions sucked.

        You grea

        • You can postulate on alternate non-Myst timelines until the cows come home, but to point at it as the point that Adventure Gaming died is a little unfair. It seems to me that there were more market factors at work than just one phenomenally successful game. Yes, there were a lot of myst knock offs, but it was a rocky time for multimedia gaming thanks to Windows starting to appear as a gaming platform despite being not very well suited for the task.

          Also, 1996 was the year both Mario 64 and - ushering in a
        • Day of the Tentacle was 1993...as was Sam & Max Hit the Road.

          And guess what there Slappy: Myst came out in 1993 as well. Don't belive me? Think I've been smoking crack? Ah...here's the Wikipedia link:

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst [wikipedia.org]

          Myst didn't kill the adventure game.

          # Day of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion 2) (1993)
          # Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993)
          # Full Throttle (1995)
          # The Dig (1995)
          # The Curse of Monkey Island (1997)
          # Grim Fandango (1998)
          # Escape from Monkey Island (2000)

          And that's just the LucasArt
          • Admittedly I was incorrect on the release date of Myst 1, I was relying on the Gamefaqs entry which lists 1995.

            Full Throttle, and The Curse of Monkey Island represent the last gasp of the original Adventure genre. The Dig was Very Influenced by Myst, especially in terms of puzzle structure and a lack of interation. Grim Fandango and EMI rely on a completely different and arguably inferior interface (as in those games you end up driving the main character around like a car in Grand Theft Auto 2.

            I als

            • "The total number of non-Myst-clone adventure games after about 1996 or so is scarcely more than a dozen."

              Do you even play adventure games?
              Plenty (as in hundreds) of non Myst style adventures have been released since 1996.

              Sure plenty of first person Myst alike games have been made, but to say that Myst killed adventure games or that no adventure games are being made is ignorant.

              • I do play adventure games, and I can scarcely follow what you are talking about.

                Hundreds? Is there some underground industry I've been locked out of? The last adventure game of note I played was "The Longest Journey," and that was released four years ago!

                Or are you asserting that games in the vein of Mario 64 and Tombraider are adventure games (they're not. They're action games. PERIOD, no discussion, they're 3D-platformers, therefore action games.) Many games released today bear some elements

                • No, I'm talking about stuff from companies like The Adventure Company (ignoring the MYST alikes).

                  It seams you have not been on the look out for adventure games then. I also am not talking about action/adventure (fade to black for instance) or RPG/adventure (though IMO many RPG adventure games like Fallout should count as the adventure part is primary). Frankly most survival horror games are adventure games, you may not like them, but they are.

                  Let me give you a list of games that are non MYST alike adventure
    • I agree 100%. Interestingly, I also feel that way about Star Wars and the death of Science Fiction that occurred shortly thereafter. Very few of the hardcore long-time Science Fiction fans liked Star Wars when it was new, but 90% of the casual fans and non-fans did, so it redefined the market, and a huge chunk of what has been produced has been pablum ever since.
    • If Myth had killed the adventure genre, we would be flooded know with Myst-style adventures, but we aren't. Actually I can hardly remember any adventure game in Myst-style that got popular on a larger scale beside Myst itself. What killed adventure was the race for better graphics, adventure simply never could offer any advances in terms of graphics, it was always 2d background + 2d sprites and it worked for the games, but not in the eyes of the publisher. In addition to that we got such hopeless tries to '
    • The genre was already on its way out. Myst revitalized it for awhile, but i was killed off by all the myst style clones. There are still good adventure games being made, but they get released at about 1-2 per year.

      Im looking forward to Dreamfall and Indigo Prophecy. Both expected to be relased later this year.
  • Only on games.? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by webrunner ( 108849 )
    Why is it that the sudden closing of one of gaming's most important, influential, and long-running game developers just before the release of the end of their long running saga not worthy for the front page?
    • Re:Only on games.? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by oGMo ( 379 )
      important

      They made Myst, which is something. A lot of people even really liked it, which is something else. But they're not, say, Nintendo.

      influential

      What did they influence? It's not like they came up with a genre... adventures have been around since Zork, and point-and-click ones had been around since Sierra and Lucasfilm Games (if not before). The fact they made a point-and-click adventure with prerendered graphics and a storyline was nothing new. Even the fact it was good was nothing new. Bu

      • Re:Only on games.? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Torgo's Pizza ( 547926 ) on Saturday September 03, 2005 @12:43AM (#13468760) Homepage Journal
        Someone pissed in your cereal this morning. I think you're discounting the importantance of Cyan a bit too much.

        > But they're not, say, Nintendo.

        No, but good lord, they sold more copies than anyone else at the time and really was a major contributor to the quick adoption of the CD-ROM format... something that Nintendo lagged behind on for nearly 10 years and the failure of which caused Sony to enter the marketplace. Then again you're comparing a publisher to a single developer. Nintendo has greater influence to be sure, but Cyan did at one time carry major street credential in developer circles.

        > What did they influence?

        You're kidding right? Tell me that low ID of yours isn't saying this. Cyan did inspire a whole horde of copycats and invigorated the adventure genre. You're correct that they didn't put in some new mindbending technology or that prerendered graphics hadn't been done before. They raised the bar to a whole new level with the adventure genre, causing Sierra and Infocom to bring their A game. Are you going to say next that Blizzard isn't influencial because they didn't invent the RTS genre and stuck to a 8-bit palette until Warcraft 3?

        > You realize video games have been around since like the 50s? That today's "senior" gamehouses have been around since the 80s?

        Check your dates and the video game developer graveyard sometime. While Wally's Eletronic Tennis in the '50s was technically the first, it wasn't commericially available. (Have a conversation with Ralph Baer or Bill Kunkel sometime about video game history. I know I have.)

        What you see today as "senior" gamehouses are the lucky few that managed to swallow up the dying ones. Go visit the graves of Infocom, Sierra On-Line, Westwood, Dynamix, Origin, Sir-tech, the undead lich that is Interplay. The EA and Activisions you speak of survive only by sucking the lifeblood of individual development houses.

        In retrospect, perhaps Myst isn't the end all be all game that some might make it out to be. (I liked it, didn't love it, but liked it.) But I wouldn't shamlessly discount the influence they had on the industry. Every game developer I've worked with, talked to or emailed (and that number is in the hundreds) has admired Cyan and studied their games and company to find their "secret".

        Disagree if you will, but your assertion that they will be a "tiny footnote" is greatly, greatly mistaken and completely wrong.
      • Re:Only on games.? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by webrunner ( 108849 )
        Myst was the highest selling game before the Sims. Would you consider Maxis to be a 'tiny footnote?' before The Sims came out? Because Maxis was -less important- than Cyan was.

        The Myst-clone (first person FMV point and click) basically wasn't important before Myst, and for years after Myst was like a third of all games being released. Even PC gamer based their games disc interface on the style for a while.

        I'm not saying it's the most long running, but it's a studio that's been around for 10 years. A lot
  • so sad... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Nova1313 ( 630547 ) *
    so sad to see them go. Played the games, enjoyed the book, became part of the community. It gave me a world to escape to.. They were really creating worlds. It's ashame that after the first it didn't really catch on as much anymore...
  • As gaming is making way in terms of mass appeal it seems that, more and more, independent developers are being pushed aside. Independent studios made PC gaming, and it's a real shame to see what is happening to so many of them.

    I'm sure that Cyan has become a different company in the years since Myst was released - they might have moved away from the spirit they seemed to have back in the day - but, speaking as someone who has played more than their share of videogames, this (and the relatively recent closi

    • Cyan was sort of a special case. They couldn't do Uru by themselves, and then that ended up flopping so badly at the last minute that they got into debt with Ubisoft.

      Really, they were pretty lucky Ubi let them live after Uru Live. EA probably wouldn't have.
  • Truthfully (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Chasuk ( 62477 )
    I am going to be honest -- and, not to be a troll -- but I never could figure out the excitement engendered by the Myst games. They seemed like a slide-show with puzzles, to me, and I hold them partly responsible for the deterioration of the genre.

    I started out playing the Zork games, and later Dungeon Master (MUCH better than Eye of the Beholder), and finally Monkey Island and all of its successors/spin-offs. Myst, IMHO, didn't compare with the least of the games I've just mentioned. It was even sub-par
    • For me, it was that there was finally a game similar to the Sierra games for Mac. As in "a game". At all. But at the time, despite its drawbacks, it was superbly done, if not a bit slow. Maybe it was the videos in the books that made it so neat?
    • Once again, why the excitement?

      It was the first game that had something that more closely resembeled photorealism - that made it popular. Of course, there are flukes:

      - In theory, you can complete the game in 15 minutes. (http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/game/8946 7.html [gamefaqs.com] - see the first FAQ, section VI / MYS18)
      - The main area had a puzzle where you had to press buttons to unlock a book. You can't tell if they are pressed or not: red and green seem like generic colours to me, especially when.
      - The

    • I think Myst has better puzzles than most other games. But its story has to be read from books spread around... There is actually quite a bit of reading. But you play yourself in these games, not another character.

      The Monkey Island games and Grim Fandango had much more enjoyable dialog and characters. But they were the only reason to solve the puzzles.... But I guess you could say that pretty graphics were the only reason to solve Myst puzzles.

  • The reason the Myst series (Riven in particular) are so incredible is that they aren't games. They're complete worlds ready for exploration and discovery, with a HUGE backstory and gigantic mental scope (much of this didn't arrive until after Myst, but the original game is still a classic). They're the kind of adventures where you can literally just stay in an area for 10 minutes "breathing in" the atmosphere. There are places I've visited in various Cyan-made worlds that feel more real to me than many real
  • That's all I can say about this. Maybe someday the computer adventure genre will recover from the damage that Myst did to it, but I would be very surprised if it happened.

    Rob (Quoting Green Day's "Time of Your Life" makes me even less sympathetic)
  • The Sci Fi Wire has an article up about it right now:

    Myst Developer Closes Doors [scifi.com]

    It claims that it could theoretically reopen in the future, but don't hold your breath.

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