I cannot share specific numbers, but I can say that we had an internal metric we were aiming for that had been approved, and that we exceeded that number by a significant portion. We also got a thumbs up a few weeks before launch.
This would destroy me if this happened to me. The publisher thinks lowly enough of the team and product that they won’t launch it, but not so lowly that they don’t release the IP (perhaps even at a price) to the developers.
I got a friend in game dev. They’ve worked for 3 companies over 6 years. None of the titles they have worked on were ever released.
The title they’re currently working on has had its funding cut (by Embracer Group) and the CEO of the studio is desperately trying to find another source of funding. Everyday they go into work expecting to be told the studio is shutting down.
Game dev certainly seems to suck the souls out of creative people who just want to make something fun.
Embracer treats studios like they are disposable. They killed Volition (Saint’s Row), Free Radical (TimeSpltters) plus a bunch of other studios. All of that was because their $2 billion deal with the Saudi Government fell through. Some studios managed to escape when one of the Saber Interactive original owners bought back a bunch of studios. They recently killed Pieces Interactive (Alone in the Dark).
If a studio is owned by Embracer, they are lucky if they will be around in 5 years.
For profit software companies (and those who are all abput revenue and shareholders and whatnot) are a pain to the industry at large. If it were not fot the profit motive, this world would be radically different.
Capitalism is a mistake.
Man, Paradox really just burned every ounce of goodwill they had in mere months, huh? Skylines 2 being a disaster, and now cancelling this. Just unreal.
They never really had any goodwill? What are you on about
They seemed great up until around that time in 2016 they went public.
Before that you had all the Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron games, Cities Skylines they helped make, not to mention Pillars of Eternity eoth Obsidian. Up through 2015 they were great.
What happened with Skylines 2? I don’t play the games so I’m not in the know about them
Disastrous, unoptimized launch. Paid DLC whilst the game was still full of performance issues (DLC which was later made free, after outcry. But their hand was shown).
Probably much more, but those are the two big things I remember.
That sucks! I was really hopeful for the game, it looked super nice and could have given EA a real run for their money
Damn, this makes me mad. Reading the news about this I assumed there was a good reason for this cancellation, but the devs were on track for a release. Fuck PDX. This shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
