Class-Action Lawsuit Against Chronicles Of Elyria Studio And CEO Has Been Dismissed

The legal drama surrounding Soulbound Studios and its supposedly still-in-development game Chronicles of Elyria has come to an abrupt and unexpected end. The class-action lawsuit against the studio and its CEO Jeromy Walsh by backers looking to recover their pledges has just been dismissed by the Washington Western District Court.

“The dismissal of the lawsuit marks the end of an expensive, time-consuming, two-year long journey that began as a pre-litigation letter in August of 2020 and then proceeded through two different federal courts, in two different states - first in California, and then in Washington State,” Walsh said.

“The court decision to dismiss the lawsuit comes as a victory to both all those who have, or will use crowdfunding as a source of seed funding for innovative projects, as well as (and most importantly) the backers of Chronicles of Elyria,” he added.

For those who haven’t been following along, the class-action lawsuit was officially filed against Jeromy Walsh in February 2021 a few months after the CEO announced that the studio had run out of money and announced that Chronicles of Elyria had been canceled. The ambitious MMORPG was initially crowdfunded through Kickstarter to the tune of $1,300,000 which had apparently all gone down the drain with no refunds to be given.

Walsh later did a full 180 and insisted that he was still working on the game on his own time and out of his own pockets after being threatened with legal action. Fast forward to today and Chronicles of Elyria is still in development along with a spinoff called Kingdoms of Elyria with the studio now reportedly $500,000 in debt.

It’s still unclear whether members of the class-action lawsuit will be filing an appeal. The separate case against third-party payment processing company Xsolla, however, is still in arbitration.