Game studio reportedly disbanded despite releasing one of the best games of 2024

THE gaming industry feels ruthless at the moment, with sky-high expectations that come with every release. Assassin’s Creed publisher Ubisoft is known for holding lofty expectations, and even admittedly this recently.

The downfall of success

For many developers Star Wars Outlaws would have been seen as a huge success, selling around a million copies. However, following its launch Ubisoft decided to delay the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows due to the "learnings" from Outlaws. This shows that even games that most people would consider successful, can be seen as a failure by Ubisoft.

According to a report by French journalist Gautoz, the Ubisoft team that developed Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was dissolved a few months after the game’s launch. The Lost Crown is a metroidvania, which goes back to the roots of the Prince of Persia series, namely exploration. However, metroidvanias are a more niche genre of gaming and people seem to prefer 3D action-adventure games.

No sales statistics have been released for the game, but it received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Gautoz alleges that the game didn’t meet sales expectations and that the team was disbanded shortly after launch. The team apparently pitched a sequel to Ubisoft, which was rejected, and two expansions, only one of which was approved.

Gautoz also claims that the team was very happy while working on The Lost Crown, and that those burnt out from working on Beyond Good and Evil 2 moved over to the project. While Gautoz doesn’t claim that anyone was fired in the dissolution, if true, the team would have been moved onto other projects.

The lost art of gaming

This recent news unfortunately shows a darker side to gaming that is becoming more and more apparent in recent years. Hi-Fi Rush also achieved critical acclaim and good sales, and Microsoft still decided to close down the studio Tango Gameworks. It seems critical acclaim isn’t enough anymore, and developers are no longer rewarded for their hard work.

If the industry continues to give developers unattainable targets and measuring success solely on sales, then in a few years there likely won’t be any high-quality games in development. Companies need to start measuring a game’s success by the quality of the product, and look at other aspects of the business for why that didn’t convert into sales. Poor marketing, high prices, and annoying microtransactions can all lead to lack of sales, rather than the game not being up to par.