Liquid Swords, a studio started by Christofer Sundberg, who previously founded Avalanche Studios (Just Cause, Mad Max), has confirmed a round of layoffs following a financial review. The company cited "the present challenges of the video game industry" as the reason for the redundancies. The number of affected employees is unknown.
Founded in 2020, Liquid Swords pledged to implement a "sustainable work model" and received an undisclosed investment from NetEase. In a statement issued by the studio (thanks, Game Developer), said that the layoffs were necessary to deliver "long-term sustainability". An FAQ posted on the studio's website reveals that Liquid Swords had ambitions to grow its headcount to 100 staff by early 2024; it remains unclear whether that target was achieved or the studio's current size.
Liquid Swords is still developing its first game, which is pitched as a "narrative-driven, open-world, hardboiled triple-A revenge story, built and developed in Unreal Engine 5."
When do you think "the present challenges of the video game industry" will cease to be an acceptable scapegoat for what is usually internal mismanagement? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source liquidswords.com, via gamedeveloper.com]
Comments 4
The game sounds interesting from that one pitch but clearly it’s a bit of a mess behind the scenes. Would need to actually see solid game footage.
They should have said it was going to be an AAAA game, surely that would have saved the headcount. 🙄
It's s tough business at the moment. Just throwing money endlessly at developing a game just dosnt cut it anymore as ubishafted has discovered very publicly. I had high hopes for this studio as I've enjoyed their just cause games and mad max was decent as well (shame there is no 60fps patch for the ps5.) I hope everything works out and those that have been given the chop find work soon.
Very unfortunate. The scale of games. Too ambitious. The split studio and another publisher or whatever else. It's tough out there. Oh well. Not my kind of games of interest but still feel for the studio.
They need to scale a game or make an Indie game. All they veteran staff want the same money as before splitting and it doesn't work that way. Let alone making movie scale games I don't care about. Or a successor to the same IPs again. Why? Why not doing something else. They don't have a live service on them yet make something else.
Games are just a joke at this point.
It doesn't require an accountant to tell them that yet they carry on anyways going we have a new publisher/freedom then go oh we have to still work around paying for this stuff and we have these top staff/new staff, oh budgets are different, oh we keep having to work on the engine/other aspects, oh were changing it. Oh were out of money after changing it too much. Sigh.
Do they even learn at all? They are too scared to build up again and too in their comfort mindset besides the split as it's own comfort breaking.
Hello Games went from ex Burnout or otherwise staff to Joe Danger to No Man's Sky. Like some are willing to build up again.
Nowadays most are too lazy to wait around and want to continue what they had, they can't.
Or Nightingale, they tried, only kind of understand the survival game audience and made a ok game that's still a mess. We aren't all early access open minded and we also understand the genre better then they do coming into it.
Or some devs too absorbed to pay attention. It takes us not in the industry to work this out yet in the industry they don't. Why is that?
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