EnadGlobal7, parent company of Daybreak Games, has announced that the Marvel MMO that was in development at the company has been canceled. They had planned to invest SEK 500 million, around $50.5 million, into the game over the next three years. That money will instead be “diversified across multiple, smaller size projects within the group, including the previously announced major upgrades to The Lord of the Rings Online and DC Universe Online.” New games are also on the docket.
EG7’s reasoning is “based on the re-evaluation of the development risk profile, size of investment, and the long-term product portfolio strategy for the group.” In English, that’s ‘holy moly, Avengers did not do as well as we thought it would, this is not worth 50 million’, I’d gamble. That’s a truly absurd amount of money, too, in-line with the most expensive games ever developed, if not at the very top.
Obviously, a pretty decent amount of time and money was already invested, estimated at SEK 230 million to be written down in the upcoming balance sheets and P&Ls. EG7 notes that other than this, they don’t see the cancellation having an impact on any upcoming forecasts, as the game was still a ways off.
There’s no mention of what the new games might be, or additional information on where the investments are going. Expect it to be a little while before they’re spun-up enough to see the light of day.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.
