In the past 24 hours, numerous reports have come out about debut studio Ascendant Studios, more specifically, how much was spent to make Immortals of Aveum and the developers seemed to know it would fail.
2023 was a big year for gaming. While the industry saw the highest of highs with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 leading the warmer months, there have also been a few releases that didn’t meet the expectations set for them straight out of the tunnel. While genuinely poor experiences like The Lord of the Rings Gollum were also released in 2023, Immortals of Aveum straddled that middling line of 69% on Metacritic, but was produced with AAA IP development costs. In a new report from IGN, unnamed Ascendant Studios developers (or former developers) have spoken about Immortals of Aveum development.
While the report highlights some of the major problems facing the gaming industry, such as the mass exodus of layoffs that have hit since 2023, (former or current) unnamed developers at Ascendant Studios have spoken out about the development of Immortals of Aveum, specifically how the title cost $125 million to make.
The anonymous employee(s) said “At a high level, Immortals was massively overscoped for a studio’s debut project,” then stated “The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution. Sure, there was some serious talent on the development team, but trying to make a AAA single-player shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea, especially since it was a new IP that was also trying to leverage Unreal Engine 5. What ended up launching was a bloated, repetitive campaign that was far too long” regarding the development of Immortals of Aveum.
Immortals of Aveum also has a small audience. Since launch, it has not done well on SteamDB, with a peak player base of 751 all-time. While this doesn’t necessarily give fans the full picture, it shows engagement for the title has been markedly low compared to the cost of development.
With that being said, the group of anonymous sources from Ascendant did mention, “There’s plenty of layoffs due to gross mismanagement and greed (looking at you, Embracer), but there’s also plenty that happens because this is a stupidly volatile market that requires mountains of capital to participate in at a professional studio level. For all the things Ascendant did right (paying people well, an entirely remote studio, little overtime until the end, chill environment with lots of freedom to grow, respecting QA, hiring juniors, etc.), it did not work out”
Considering Immortals of Aveum hasn’t done well, Ascendant Studios hasn’t reported their next project just yet, so fans can head over to their official X (formerly Twitter) account to stay informed on what they do next.
