The
Rival Games Development
Blog heralds "The End of an Era," announcing this Finnish developer of
Alien: Blackout and
Thief of Thieves: Season One is shutting down.
They say this is due to financial challenges which are not entirely the fault of
the COVID-19 outbreak, which they say is just "the icing on the cake." Word is:
"Thief of Thieves: Season One and Alien: Blackout will remain in stores
normally, but our first title The Detail will be pulled from Steam and AppStore
at some point." Here's a bit on why Rival is now dead on arrival:
After
Alien, things were looking up for a while. We signed a deal with Universal
Studios for a super cool smash-up of two 80s iconic franchises for an AA
PC/console narrative shooter. We had a solid team, with some serious experience,
and the same development partner from Alien, a solid vision for the game, fun
and challenging gameplay. In short, all the shenanigans for a great, innovative
game and a good business structure for the project, that even would’ve allowed
us to pay back the loans. We were months in the pre-development when, almost a
year ago, the worst possible happened: Universal had a major business strategy
shift across their portfolio, shutting our project down in a moment’s notice. We
were coming up on a milestone that contractually allowed them to shut it down
fast.