Longtime Firaxis lead designer Jake Solomon has unveiled what he's been up to since leaving the studio in February 2023. Today he and a number of former Firaxis and Maxis developers announced the formation of Midsummer Studios, a new Maryland-area game developer that is working on an unnamed "life sim" game in the vein of Electronic Arts' The Sims.The studio is launching with $6 million raised by Transcend Fund in partnership with Tirta Ventures, Betaworks Ventures, 1Up Ventures, F4 Fund, Krafton, and Day Zero Productions.Solomon is joined on the leadership team by game director Will Miller and chief operating officer Neslie Birch (who will also serve as chief financial officer). The trio and their colleagues have set up shop in Firaxis' old office in Hunt Valley, …
Hitman and Project 007 developer IO Interactive has appointed Ulas Karademir as its new chief technology officer.Karademir will report to IOI CEO Hakan Abrak and has been tasked with overseeing technical operations at the Danish studio. That includes supporting the development of IOI's proprietary in-house Glacier engine and working with the production team on current projects.IOI's new CTO is a familiar face. Karademir had a seven year stint at the studio between 2007 and 2014 and has over 20 years of experience in engineering and leadership roles, including a spell as Unity's VP of core engineering, graphics, operations, and productions.He most recently served as general manager and CPO at RealityOS, but says he's looking forward to returning to IOI to help propel the…
Medieval city-builder Manor Lords has topped 2 million sales in under three weeks.The latest figures come from publisher Hooded Horse, which praised the early access PC title for delivering a "sensational debut" across Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, and The Microsoft Store.Manor Lords is developed by Slavic Magic and has stormed out of the gates. The project became a record-breaker after amassing over 3.2 million wishlists on Steam (a platform record) and topped 1 million sales within 24 hours of its early access debut.Hooded Horse co-founder and CEO Tim Bender said the title has exceeded the company's wildest expectations. "It's been wonderful to see so many players give Manor Lords a try," said Bender. "We had some pretty optimistic expectations and even…
Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios shared some fascinating news about the game's future today. In a blog post celebrating the game's debut on Xbox Game Pass and Electronic Arts' EA Play subscription service, the company announced that going forward, all revenue from sales of the fantasy-themed first-person shooter will go straight into its own pockets.It seems EA Games won't be collecting any revenue from those purchases. Ascendant Studios will obviously still owe platform fees to services like Steam and the PlayStation Store."For the foreseeable future, 100 percent of the net revenue from Immortals of Aveum purchases goes directly to our studio," the company said. "If you grab the game at full price or on sale, refer a friend to check it out,…
Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has established a new studio in Warsaw, Poland.The expansion means Larian now operates seven studios across Barcelona, Dublin, Gent, Guildford, Quebec, Kuala Lumpur, and Warsaw. Larian said the new opening will strive to create "genre-leading games" in tandem with its other teams across the world."Like its sister studios across the globe, Larian Studios Warsaw is dedicated to fostering an environment where developers can thrive creatively and reclaim their agency," reads a post on Larian's careers page. "Systems-heavy RPGs need best-in-class developers, that’s why we've put the people who build those systems at the center of our culture."Baldur's Gate 3 was a huge critical success for Larian, sweep…
There are plenty of lessons the developers at Rebel Wolves have learned from their time at CD Projekt Red, and one of the biggest is keeping things small.Talking to Bloomberg, founder Konrad Tomaszkiewicz explained the studio won't grow to the scale of the Witcher and Cyberpunk outfit. Chiefly, he feels things can get lost the more hands you put on a project, something that notably plagued Cyberpunk 2077."When you work at a company like ours, you don’t have 20 colleagues, you have five colleagues," said Tomaszkiewicz. "You need to do more, but at the same time, you have a bigger impact on the game."Tomaszkiewicz began his game development career at CDPR nearly 20 years ago. While admitting a smaller team is "totally different work" from his old studio, …
The Nintendo Switch has topped 141.3 million sales in seven years, according to Nintendo's own estimates. The milestone further cements the Switch's place as Nintendo's best-selling home console of all time.The handheld-home-console hybrid will need to shift a few more units to eclipse the 154 million lifetime sales amassed by the Nintendo DS, currently the best-selling console in the company's long history.Nintendo has diversified its Switch lineup since launching the original model in March 2017, adding a more affordable variant called the Switch Lite and a premium offering called the OLED Model to its roster.
Switch successor speculation
Supergiant launched Hades II in Early Access yesterday (May 5), and it's already off to an impressive start. Per SteamDB, the roguelike has peaked at 103,567 players.That puts it at over double the peak of the first Hades' Early Access when it came to Steam in 2019. It first arrived on the Epic Games Store in 2018 as a timed exclusive.Both Hades games have been the studio's only forays into Early Access. In Hades II's case, Supergiant said it'd have more content than the first Hades, with more content in the coming months. It expects Early Access to last throughout 2024.During its two-year pre-1.0 period, Hades sold 700,000 copies. At time of writing, Supergiant has revealed how much Hades II has sold.
Before yesterday's sudden closure, Arkane's Austin studio was preparing to support its 2023 game, Redfall. But with development now over, those plans have been abandoned.According to a new IGN report, the team had a roadmap in place for its troubled shooter. DLC and updates, such as a pair of previously promised heroes and an offline mode, were said to be in development.Makers of recent live-service games like this and Suicide Squad said offline would be implemented post-launch. Without it, Redfall will eventually die when the servers go, and it's anyone's guess as to when that will be.As IGN understands, Arkane Austin was working on this roadmap until "very recently." The DLC characters were apparently set to launch this Halloween, over 18 months after the ga…
Before yesterday's sudden closure, Arkane's Austin studio was preparing to support its 2023 game, Redfall. But with development now over, those plans have been abandoned.According to a new IGN report, the team had a roadmap in place for its troubled shooter. DLC and updates, such as a pair of previously promised heroes and an offline mode, were said to be in development.Makers of recent live-service games like this and Suicide Squad said offline would be implemented post-launch. Without it, Redfall will eventually die when the servers go, and it's anyone's guess as to when that will be.As IGN understands, Arkane Austin was working on this roadmap until "very recently." The DLC characters were apparently set to launch this Halloween, over 18 months after the ga…
Lightforge Games is laying off the majority of its team and pausing development on Project ORCS.The fully-remote studio was formed in 2021 by a group of Blizzard and Epic Games veterans and quickly secured $15 million to finance its debut project.Project ORCS was billed as a cross-platform social experience that would let players "create worlds and tell stories with unprecedented freedom." The studio claimed it would combine the creative elements of Minecraft with the open-ended storytelling of tabletop RPGs.Although Lightforge is cutting jobs across the board, the studio intends to regroup as a "skeleton team" to carve out a viable future.