Saints Row and even Red Faction fans were undoubtedly dismayed at yesterday’s sudden news that Volition Games would be closing down.
Volition had been in the business for thirty years, crafting all sorts of interesting games from the 6DOF first-person spaceship shooter game Descent to the space combat simulator FreeSpace 2, not to mention two action roleplaying games in the Summoner franchise. However, Saints Row and Red Faction were by far the studio’s most successful and popular titles.
Fans have been worrying that the closure of Volition could mean the abandonment of those franchises. However, in an official tweet response to the studio’s announcement, Deep Silver (now a division of Plaion) stated that both IPs would ‘live on’ at Plaion.
The most likely scenario at this point appears to be Plaion licensing Saints Row and/or Red Faction to a third-party developer interested in reviving these games. Embracer Group has many developers, so there’s always a chance one of the internal studios could take the mantle off Volition. Then again, there are countless dormant IPs at Embracer after all the acquisitions made in the last five years. Additionally, Embracer is now focusing on the biggest ones, chiefly The Lord of the Rings (which they acquired for only $395 million), to maximize revenue.
As a reminder, Volition released two underwhelming games with Agents of Mayhem and Saints Row. However, Embracer Group wasn’t planning to close them at first; last November, the studio was moved from Deep Silver to Gearbox, hoping that the Borderlands makers could provide better oversight of its operations.
The final straw was the $2 billion deal Embracer didn’t get from the nearly completed partnership with Savy Games. When the deal fell through at the last minute, Embracer was forced to announce a company-wide restructuring program that included the closure of Danish studio Campfire Cabal and, sadly, of Volition. Let’s hope no more studios have to be closed because of it.
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