Immortals of Aveum studio layoffs were down to poor sales in a crowded market, CEO says

[John Elden Ring]

The CEO of Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios says that poor game sales due to a crowded release window were what led to nearly half the team being laid off.

In an interview with the Xbox Expansion Pass YouTube channel, Bret Robbins was asked about the decision in September to lay off around 45% of the game’s staff.

Robbins replied by pointing out that Ascendant was one of numerous studios that laid off staff this year, and said the main reason for it was that the game simply didn’t sell enough copies.

It’s a crazy time right now. There’s an article every day about some kind of huge layoff, and it’s unfortunate. It’s certainly the hardest thing I’ve had to do.

You work really hard with people, they’ve put their faith in you and their trust in you, and you want to honour that as much as you can, so when you have to make a decision like that it really sucks. We are an independent company. We’re not EA, we’re not a large organisation. Our bottom line required us to sell a lot of video games, and we didn’t meet our targets, and that’s just the unfortunate dollars and cents of it, and that meanst we had to do some layoffs.

There are so many things when you’re making a game that are out of your control – certainly the market can be largely out of your control – and it was unfortunate for us, but my hope is that I can work with a lot of those people again and that with our next project, or future projects, we continue to grow.

Source

 

[EightC]

I really don't understand releasing a game like this going into the busy season, it's no surprise it under performed. I bought the game on Playstation and honestly I did enjoy it but releasing it before a large amount of big titles was a bad move. This would have been the perfect game to drop in spring when there is a slow period for games then it may have had better footing. The other issue the game has is that people know it will be on EA Play and I personally know a few people who are waiting to play it knowing it will eventually be on that service instead of paying full price.

 

[Zzero]

I really don't understand releasing a game like this going into the busy season, it's no surprise it under performed. I bought the game on Playstation and honestly I did enjoy it but releasing it before a large amount of big titles was a bad move. This would have been the perfect game to drop in spring when there is a slow period for games then it may have had better footing. The other issue the game has is that people know it will be on EA Play and I personally know a few people who are waiting to play it knowing it will eventually be on that service instead of paying full price.

Spring was crowded as hell this year. You had Star Wars Jedi, REmake, a couple big Nintendo titles, Dead Space remake (and that competitor game that also underperformed,) and I think a few others too. The whole year was stacked.

 

[JAHGamer]

idiots, this game needed to be delayed anyway. One of the worst optimized games of the year, they could've released it in January, working properly and it would've sold significantly better.

 

[Infinity]

nah their game just wasnt it and the optimization was dog water. 1 triple A game failing can sink or cause major down sizing for a studio. Scary.