It would appear that layoffs are on the cards at Frost Giant Studios.
That’s according to CEO and production director Tim Morten, who told Game Developer that its debut project – Stormgate – had failed to meet expectations. The RTS title has managed a peak of 1,000 concurrent players on Steam, well below the 5,000 it hit during its Early Access period.
“We’re at 20 per cent of what we saw during early access, and that is not a sustainable place for us to be. So either we find a partner or we have get smaller,” Morten admitted.
He continued: “There are some big IPs that would make a lot of sense to turn into an RTS, so there are a lot of conversations for us to have as a studio around that. The second clear area of opportunity for us is user-generated content (UGC).
“RTS has such a rich history of UGC and already with the first early release of our (UCG) tool there has been a tremendous amount of activity and creativity evident from the community. There are a variety of partners who I think could really help us capitalise and double down on that. But I think it’s fair to say the future for Frost Giant and the future for Stormgate really depends on us finding a good partner, otherwise we will have no choice but to contract.”
Frost Giant Studios had previously raised $40 million in funding, most of which has been spent on salaries for staff. Morten says that this is far below the amount it would take to make a top-tier RTS title at a studio like Blizzard today.
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