Immortals of Aveum didn’t light the world on fire when it was released, and now former employees have come out to talk about what went wrong with it.
According to a report from IGN about how layoffs have impacted the video games industry, one alleged former Ascendant Studios said, “At a high level, Immortals was massively overscoped for a studio’s debut project. The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution.”
They went on to explain that while the studio has a skilled developers, Immortals of Aveum just wasn’t a good idea in today’s gaming climate. There were many factors going against it such as its genre and bloated campaign, according to the dev. “Sure, there was some serious talent on the development team, but trying to make a AAA single-player shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea, especially since it was a new IP that was also trying to leverage Unreal Engine 5,” they added.
A current employee chimed in as well, but with a different perspective, saying that it simply just didn’t find an audience. “It’s not a sequel or a remake, it doesn’t take 400 hours to beat, has zero microtransactions, no pointless open world grinding,” they explained. “Although not everyone loved it, it reviewed pretty well, currently sitting at a 74 on OpenCritic and a Mostly Positive on Steam. No one bought it.”
Ascendant Studios CEO Bret Robbins previously blamed the game’s commercial failure on an inopportune release window as well as launching at a $70 price tag. As a result of low sales, Ascendant Studios laid off almost half of its staff back in September 2023.
In GameSpot’s Immortals of Aveum review, we said, “The first-person shooter action of Immortals of Aveum suffers from a difficult-to-navigate control scheme and lackluster story.”
