Microsoft recently announced that Project Spark is no longer. The creative venture by Microsoft and Skybox Labs has come to an end. You can no longer download the game creation tool for the Xbox One or Windows platforms.

According to Games Industry, the statement was made over on the Project Spark forums by community manager Thomas Gratz, who explained…

“Starting 5/13/16, “Project Spark” will no longer be available for download on the Xbox Marketplace or Windows Store. For existing users of “Project Spark,” online services will be unavailable after 8/12/16. Without services, players will no longer be able to download user-generated content or upload their own creations. If you want to access user-generated content offline, you will need to download this content prior to 8/12/16.”

So what happens after August 12th? Everything online goes kaput.

It’s another reason why that “all digital future” keeps looking less and less promising. Project Spark joins the growing list of online-only projects that no longer have any historical value once the servers go offline.

Anyone unlucky enough to have purchased a retail copy of Project Spark after October 5th, 2015 will need to take advantage of the Microsoft account credit that they’re offering. Unfortunately you’ll be limited in using that credit only on the Xbox or Windows Store.

Gratz further mentions that despite Project Spark being more dead than Ted Cruz’ dream of becoming President, no layoffs have occurred at SkyBox or Microsoft…

“When “Project Spark” transitioned away from active development last fall, many of our team members moved to other projects within Microsoft Studios. While this means there have been no layoffs at Microsoft, it also means it’s simply no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping “Project Spark” up and running with meaningful updates and bug fixes”

That’s a remarkable feat by Microsoft given that they just recently shuttered Lionhead Studios and shutdown progress on Fable Legends.

Project Spark had potential but it launched during a time when no one had any confidence in the Xbox One, and it launched as a toolkit where a lot of casuals had a difficult time wrapping their head around the creative aspects of the game.

A slightly more dumbed down version of Project Spark with easier to follow creation examples and tutorials might allow it to take some shape or form as a successful IP sometime in the future, but for now it was always going to be the more complex and less convenient version of LittleBigPlanet.

Nevertheless, there were some really cool projects made in Project Spark and you can check out one of them below, which is a fan made creation of Dragon Ball Z, with a video made courtesy of Son Gohan.