Team Kanohi, the indie game studio behind the fan-made game Bionicle: Masks of Power, released a statement today informing fans that after 8 years of development, the LEGO Group has asked them to shut down the project in its entirety.
The statement, which was published on the Team Kanohi Google Drive, the team divulged a great deal of information about the game, including the fact that a shadowdrop release of a demo was scheduled for August 10th, 2025.
We urge fans of Bionicle and this fan-made project to read the statement.
“We've been transparent about the hardships our team has faced over the past year as we've worked to release the first look at BIONICLE: Masks of Power: the FREE THE BAND demo. After many years of hard work, our team was in the final stages of bugfixing and polishing for the demo's release. We had planned to shadowdrop the demo on August 10th, 2025.
Unfortunately, it seems that will no longer happen. The LEGO Group has asked our team to shut down our project in its entirety, and remove BIONICLE: Masks of Power from the public eye.”
Since the demo for Bionicle: Masks of Power can no longer be released, the developers have put out a full video walkthrough of the FREE THE BAND demo for fans to see what could have been. You can watch this video below, or follow this link.
Team Kanohi was not able to give a clear answer as to why they were asked by the LEGO Group to shut down their fan-made title, stressing that they had “made an effort to ensure our project was in good standing with the LEGO Group, carefully following the LEGO Group's Fair Play guidelines.”
The team’s best guess is that it was “too easy to mistake for an official product.”
This is all terrible news for both Team Kanohi and Bionicle fans who were looking forward to Bionicle: Masks of Power. However, the dev team has created a silver lining; they are rebranding to Unmasked Games and starting a new game, Project Rustbound.
“Our plan is to take everything we've learned through creating Masks of Power and use that knowledge and experience as the foundation of a brand-new, original game. Currently codenamed Project Rustbound, our team has already begun brainstorming concepts for a new, original world that we get the chance to build ourselves. We can't wait to take everything that we've learned through working on this game and use it to make something entirely our own…
This has been heartbreaking news for our entire team, but we're also incredibly excited about what the future has in store, and for what we'll get the chance to create next. We hope that you're all just as excited as we are.”
Project Rustbound is still in the early concept phase, so we are unlikely to hear anything about it for some time. We wish the Unmasked Games team all the best and look forward to what they create.
Were you looking forward to the Bionicle: Masks of Power game? Let us know in the comments.
