From the headline I was hoping some execs fell on their sword but nope. Workers get the shaft and higher-ups keep their job to look after the rest of the business.
As always, its the workers who take the fall for greedy executives.
From Daedalics statement they also gained federal funding as well. So I guess the execs enriched themselves with givernment funding then got rid of the workers after. Thats much worse.
This doesn’t surprise me at all
I think the devs just bit off more than they could chew with a game type way outside of their norm.
They’re used to making adventure and point and click games not big titles like they were trying to do for Gollum.
Rather unsurprising but of course sucks for the developers. What were the execs thinking?
They were probably thinking they could get AAA game quality and indie game budgets, just by injecting a well known license.
I kinda hate that about companies. The ones who make hairbrained decisions are never the ones who pay the consequences.
Stray pulled off AAA quality on a tiny budget using something loved by a lot of people (cat protagonist) but it had a number of advantages, primarily you don’t need licensing fees for cats, the dev time was deep into “purely a labor of love” length, and I don’t think it came out near any releases of a superior direct competitor. Any adventure epic right now had to contend with FF16 and people still messing around with Tears of the Kingdom.
I think licencing agreements are the death of many games. I maintain that the failure of Cyberpunk 2077 was primarily due to their involvement with Keanu Reeves and I need to bring in revenue to satisfy his Hollywood contract.
Make money and cut costs. Always the case.
They were thinking they’ll get their golden parachute regardless of their effort, and the workers will take the fall, just like they did here, so fuck project quality!
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They were kind of sabotaged. Who thought it would be a good idea to make a game about golumn? Like why not make a game about a hobbit instead if you have to make a LOTR non-violence game?
Yes! A Hobbit farming sim. Imagine getting to design your own hobbit hole and farm? Id buy a game like that.
A 3d srardew valley style game where you play as a Hobbit would be just… Sooooo good. Nice
The in game potatoes can have the tooltip description, “Po-tay-toes, boil 'em, mash 'em, stuck 'em in a stew.”
Always sad to witness folks losing their jobs, but I guess we all saw this coming. Here’s hoping they all manage to land on their feet.
That said, I have to wonder what that second game was going to be about. Codename “It’s Magic”, probably something involving Gandalf or another Wizard? 🤔Completely unsurprising. How anyone at the studio thought that was acceptable to release is beyond me.
I feel really bad for the employees. Feels like the execs set them up to fail. Hopefully they land on their feet.
I have a lifetime account at LoTRO. Whenever stories about games based on LoTR come up, I am always hoping it will become something awesome, but they all just seem to flop. The ownership rights of the IP are also so fractured and convoluted, it’s kind of a miracle anything actually gets made let alone made well. Maybe someone will actually step up at some point to make a game that really embraces the magic in Tolkien’s universe, instead of trying to change it and them calling it lightning in a bottle.
It’s unfortunate isn’t it. Kind of reminds me of my beloved Halo universe. Most anything that comes out is just hot garbage and it hurts me. I’d even take something mediocre at this point but most of it is just bad.
Oof. This sucks, it seems that if you don’t have an estabilidade name you can’t have bad “AAA” launch nowadays.
Damn, this makes me incredibly sad. Edna & Harvey occupied my mind for quite a long time and shaped me as a person, even if just a little.
Memoria was the standout game for me. After what you said I might try Edna & Harvey though!
Not surprising but still sad, of course the people making the stupid choices dont face the consequences. I feel for the employees
just think of all the money that this game had poured into it…and the failure is why the Embracer Group (THQNordic) is cancelling games and re-prioritizing it’s studios.
I’m gonna be livid if my Deus Ex Reboot / 3rd sequel got cancelled because of this…
Is a new Deus Ex game confirmed? Because I have heard absolutely nothing about that and was under the impression they were done with the series.
Embracer / THQNordic mentioned last year they had interest and basically wanted to do where cyberpunk failed expectations
God, that’d be amazing but I’ve been burned so many times in the past that I can’t hold my breath.
It was a funny meme while it lasted.
