this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024

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Gothic, Risen, and Elex Dev "Piranha Bytes" Reportedly the Latest Embracer Studio to Shut Down (www.ign.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Quite sad, but entirely unsurprising.

I loved Gothic to death, and 2 is my all-time favorite game, but after having their wrists slit by the publisher with Gothic 3, and everything happening after the release of that, I am not upset it's over.

The quality of ELEX was miserably bad in every way imaginable, and it only got worse with ELEX2. Risen had great potential with the first game, but completely flopped it with the next two.

For a lack of a better expression, they were a one-trick pony, and rode that wave of success into their eventual grave.

I'm not sure how substantiated these claims are, but i've also heard that most of the original team have left years before the shutdown either way, so essentially, what was left of Piranha Byte is just a husk of what used to be

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wasn't Piranha Bytes not profitable for quite some time?

Their games certainly had a community of fans, but I don't think those are enough to keep a whole studio afloat.

Just thinking out loud, I did not look at any numbers, but in my head what's done them in is not producing games that feel good to play. I loved Gothic 3 and Arcania at the time, but I'd choose any other 3rd person RPG that actually has snappy controls over the more modern stuff like Elex and I feel like that's the mainstream opinion going around.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, far as I know they also started to struggle with Risen already, as cost started going up for 3D RPGs with open worlds. If you are a niche creator, that's a problem as your niche cannot be endlessly expanded.

I never tried ELEX or ELEX 2 (kinda should, but eh, bit late now), but they looked fine. Nothing noteworthy, but decent. But the thing is, I have a long long list of just RPGs that I still want to play that are on my backlog, like even Baldur's Gate 3. And now Dawntrail for FFXIV just released. It'll be years more before I get around to ELEX. I wish they had gone more something more artsy in style than just generic-3D open SciFi world, as that ages badly. Look at Mass Effect 1 and so on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Seems like we're in the same boat, haha.

I also have a big backlog, and there are far more interesting options than their stuff.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It has gotten to the point where if you work for a game studio that gets bought out or sold, might as well get ahead of the game and start looking for a new job before they have the chance to fire you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Before I left the industry in 2022 this is exactly what we did. Only it's more often when a project is finished.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Less than a day after I find out from an old article that there was supposed to be a modernized remake of Gothic 1 on the way to be published this year and got all excited. Fucking fantastic 😮‍💨

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The remake is still happening as it's developed by Alkimia Interactive and published by THQ Nordic, Pyranha Bytes had nothing to do with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and I bet it will be a soulless husk of the original.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I'll reserve my final judgment until 2nd of August and the THQ Nordic Showcase but the playable teaser they released doesn't leave me optimistic either.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Actual news: two of the former leads (Jennifer and Björn Pankratz) founded a new studio: Pithead Studios

I guess they can't carry over any old IP, but at least we might get more Gothic-like games.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Oh man, I hope so!

I prefer their games over anything Bethesda/Diablo/whatever stuff.

Their games, as clunky and weird they sometimes are, have soul and passion. I'm playing Risen 2 at the moment, and I just love the world. So much too see, every corner has something to find, even if it's just a bottle of Rum.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Fuck embracer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

To be fair: Piranha Bytes would have ceased to exist years ago without them...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wasn't this already confirmed a few months ago?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

I thought so, too. I'm finding news that a closure was strongly suspected, but it wasn't yet confirmed.

German source: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000203604/piranha-bytes-das-studio-hinter-gothic-steht-vor-der-schliessung

[–] [email protected] 52 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Embracer is straight acquiring and then murdering people's nostalgia.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Embracer, Extender, Extinguisher

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Except they don't Extender

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Extender? I hardly knew 'er!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Most of this nostalgia was already functionally dead and got a second lease on life, really. There was no chance another Alone in the Dark or Outcast was going to come out of the previous IP owners.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The sad truth is that most of these devs would not have survived without embracer. MAYBE some of them can pull a Platinum and say "Yo, want to pay us to make a really mediocre tmnt game?" to help make ends meet. But with funding in the indie space what it increasingly is becoming... the odds of pulling that off are poor.

Of course, BECAUSE of the mass consolidation by platform holders and publishers those studios don't even have the opportunity to try and make a shitty transformers game to keep the lights on.

Like, a decade or two ago the talking point was the EA killed all these amazing studios who were one hit wonders when they were bought out. And yeah, fuck EA. But there is a reason most of those genres ALSO died out with the studios because... they were one hit wonder genres. People loved the novelty of Dungeon Keeper and then rapidly lost interest with every iteration.

But also? Maybe those studios could have pivoted and we would have had what we see today with The Defenestration Trilogy and so forth.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This isn’t what was happening. It’s a tale as old as time, once a corporation becomes large enough it will buy up scrappy competitors and allow them to fail so that they can take the ideas and staff who would otherwise be resistant to the business getting sold.

This happens because even if 50 of those ideas fail but you have 1 guy who comes up with a battle royale game mode, it pays off. None of these companies want to own and manage 50 indie studios, so they shut them down and absorb them on purpose.

And big studios aren’t even immune from this. I think Bethesda is keeping their name, but they’re in dangerous territory. Obsidian is hanging by a thread and barely got saved from this. DoubleFine still exists for the moment. But look at what happened to Tango Gameworks getting shafted by Xbox. The industry devours indie studios day by day for the hope of their stock growth, don’t be fooled

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I am not saying embracer or MS or Sony or whoever else are "good guys"

But actually look at the hellscape that is indie development right now. Studios with solid track records are fighting tooth and nail for publisher deals. And newer studios are just fucked. NoClip have done a few episodes of a "documentary" about making a game and Danny O'Dwyer gave a really depressing take on what it is like pitching for a publisher that compared it to Tinder and being glad if someone is kind enough to actually say "no" rather than ghosting you.

Some of the studios involved might have been able to secure publisher deals. Most would have gone out of business likely even sooner.

Its easy to blame big corporations and big corporations deserve a lot of blame. But it is more important to understand what is actually going on so that maybe people don't throw shitfits when developers use Early Access or even try the kickstarter well again.