Hey all, I’m back with a look at gaming studio closures for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

Gaming Studio Closures?: The past few years has seen tons of studios being shuttered by parent publishers, and that’s a huge shame regarding some of them. Notable studios like Monolith Productions, which made titles like The Operative: No One Lives Forever, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, and Condemned: Criminal Origins have closed. Arkane Studios Austin is another example, although at least some of the folks who worked there moved on to other Arkane studios. There are many others.

Why has it been happening?: Rising development costs, genre bloat, and other factors such as geopolitical issues like the war in Ukraine and COVID-19 have made developing games much more challenging. Honestly, game development costing hundreds of millions of dollars is not great, though I’d say that is a topic that I might touch on another day. But another reason is because C-suite executives are also pushing a ton of responsibility onto the actual developers’ heads with unrealistic expectations, which is another issue entirely.

What can be done?: Well, supporting developers by buying games is an option, but it’s not always a good option. Some titles are not very good like last year’s infamous bomb Concord, which was terminated only two weeks after release with everything being shut down and not playable at all. But it’s mostly going to require change in how games are developed, and I’m not sure how exactly that can be done. If I did, I’d probably be making lots of money and not be writing as frequently as I do here on GiN.