Super Smash Bros. Brawl Mod "Project M" Ceases Development

The Project M development team announced that the popular Super Smash Bros. Brawl mod, Project M ceased development effective yesterday.

The popular mod started its development 6 years ago as a response by Super Smash Bros. Melee fans to the changes made in Super Smash Bros. Brawl being the complete opposite of Melee. The mod fixed some balance issues and modified Brawl's mechanics for it be more similar to Melee.

Many fans thought that the reason why Project M stopped developing has something to do with Nintendo sending them a cease and desist letter. The dev team's attorney and business consultant Ryan Morrison clarified:

To clarify: We weren't contacted, issued a C&D, threatened or had legal action taken against us in any way, but we want it to stay that way.

— Video Game Attorney (@MrRyanMorrison) December 2, 2015

As of right now, the Project M dev team is currently working on new projects, which they cannot reveal as of the moment. As of yesterday, the final version of the game is 3.6 and all downloads for it are now gone in their website. But that's not all, as it turns out, prior to the team deciding to cease the development of Project M, they worked on the next version of the mod that includes new characters!

The new Project M characters were leaked in 4chan's /v/ board and these new characters are: Knuckles (Sonic the Hedgehog), Lyn (Fire Emblem), and Isaac (Golden Sun). The final build prior to the end of Project M's development has Knuckles and Lyn being 90% complete and Isaac being 25% complete. 

[Source: Kotaku, Gematsu]