[Eurogamer] The fall of Starbreeze

iceblade · Jan 28, 2019

It's pretty sad to read all this, honestly. I used to really like Payday 2 and it was a pretty fun game at one point. This whole story reminds me of Crytek though - trying to bite off more than they can chew and winding up having to close or heavily downsize as a result :(.Also:

Based on my conversations with staff, most were unaware of just how severe Starbreeze's financial difficulties really were, or how crucial The Walking Dead was to its survival. As one source put it to me: "If they knew we needed this to sell five million copies to save the company, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would have left way before thinking, this is not going to happen."

Jeez...

Error 52 said:
I think the lesson here is to never take The Walking Dead license for a game.

That IP is cursed.

You might be on to something here.

Doctor Ironic said:
Brief reminder that console Payday is still far behind the PC version on content and that the Switch version has gotten literally zero content updates since its launch.

I wish I could say I'm surprised to read this but honestly, given they did very similar things with the PS3 and 360 copies and also the PS4 / XB1 copies (both got very very very delayed updates) it's not really all that surprising.

Filipus · Jan 28, 2019

That paragraph about him crunching while he's getting a divorce is depressing... How can your priorities be so messed up?!?

Best of luck for everyone still at starbreeze, it's never good to lose your job.

JigglesBunny · Jan 28, 2019

Yeah, I recall saying that the console version of TWD would never materialize but this is even more dire than I imagined. Best of luck to the employees (read: victims) still sticking it out right now.

LiquidSolid · Jan 28, 2019

Starbreeze took in money from investors with a rights issue and bought Overkill with shares, but, according to people familiar with the deal, Starbreeze was in such a terrible financial position that these shares were essentially worthless. And so, the owners of Overkill were paid with so many "worthless" shares, they became the majority owners of Starbreeze by default. In 2012, just a couple of months after the launch of Syndicate, Starbreeze announced it had acquired Overkill, but this announcement was misleading. The reality was Overkill took over Starbreeze. "In practice, Starbreeze was given away," one source says. "On the other hand, both Starbreeze and Overkill would probably not have survived without this merger and Payday 2 would never have been made."

I never understood how the clowns who ran Grin into the ground ended up running Starbreeze and what happened to Starbreeze's original studio but suddenly everything makes sense. What a shitshow.

Deleted member 34618 · Jan 28, 2019

RoninChaos said:
When I read shit like this it's always amazing to me that we still see people defend crunch. There is so much mismanagement in the games industry that just doesn't happen in other software development. I swear, some of these companies prey on people who will take less money to do more work because they want to make games and royally fuck them over.

Unfortunately it does. I'm not sure if it's quite as common as in the game's industry but it still happens plenty in the tech startup scene. As a topical example (two documentaries just came out on it), remember the Fyre Festival? Fyre was a tech startup making an app for booking musicians and other performers for events. The CEO decided to dump all the company's money (and then some) into what was originally supposed to serve as a publicity event for their actual product.

Jintor · Jan 28, 2019

"Everyone knew it was going to tank," said another. "All of us, we put our blood, sweat and tears - and our fucking livers and pancreases - everything into that game, and no matter how much we would push to do it as best we could, it got shat on. No matter how much you polish a turd, it's still a turd. It was never going to get any better than where it was. It was always hacked. Everything that was done there was - let's hack it and put it together. There wasn't much hope for most people, and what little hope there was was dead by the end of it."

Jesus christ.

Fantastic reporting by Yin-Poole.

Poimandres · Jan 28, 2019

Riddick, The Darkness, and the Payday games (on PC) were great. Syndicate has some fans, and Brothers was also very well received. I know... Old Star Breeze/new Star Breeze switch happened in there, but those are still some solid games.

Looks like the exodus to form Machine Games was well timed.

Grisby · Jan 28, 2019

Read this to day. Good read. That one CEO though damn.

His last letter to the employees was something else.

guybrushfreeman · Jan 28, 2019

It was an excellent article. Hope the devs there find a way to land on their feet after this mess

higemaru · Jan 28, 2019

Magoo said:
THQ Nordic will end up buying the Payday IP won't they.

THQ Nordic is the Holy Roman Empire of game publishing

endlessflood · Jan 29, 2019

Poimandres said:
Riddick, The Darkness, and the Payday games (on PC) were great. Syndicate has some fans, and Brothers was also very well received. I know... Old Star Breeze/new Star Breeze switch happened in there, but those are still some solid games.

Looks like the exodus to form Machine Games was well timed.

Syndicate is still the greatest co-op experience I've ever experienced in gaming. The fact that nobody bought it is still something I consider to be a terrible injustice. It's a shame that there was such hysteria around the fact that it was an FPS, because it was fucking brilliant. Anyone who worked on that game has my eternal gratitude and admiration.

Except for the guy who wanted the bloom dialed up to 11. That guy needs to buy everyone else on the team a drink.

Quad Lasers · Jan 29, 2019

Between that Underworld game's reception and this, there's no way System Shock 3 isn't boned, right?

I would've liked to hear what happened to the original Starbreeze team post-Darkness that caused a large exodus to Machine Games, but maybe that was just the usual EA grinding down developers.

Bo Andersson's comedy of fuck ups was an interesting read, though. Hopefully his brother is smarter about things.

Tagg · Jan 29, 2019

Excellent journalism but a depressing read. What incredible mismanagement.

AmirMoosavi · Jan 29, 2019

Great article, but I'm still not clear on what the Valhalla engine was and why Bo forked out for it? This press release is vague and I can't find any non-Starbreeze games that were developed with it?:
https://www.mcvuk.com/development/starbreeze-acquires-valhalla-game-engine

Joni · Jan 29, 2019

60fps said:
I just learned that the developers of the new Wolfenstein games are the exact same people who made Riddick and The Darkness.

Let's just say reading that helps explain why the new Wolfenstein games are so awesome.

LabRat · Jan 29, 2019

anyone know what's going to happen to system shock 3?
i will always be thankful for starbreeze giving us riddick and the darkness

Zeouter · Jan 29, 2019

Really good read, really depressing reality.
Very sorry for those who worked so hard and were mislead.

Prolepro · Jan 29, 2019

They had it all lined up in 2013 with Payday 2 and Brothers and a string of good publisher rights and it sounds like upper execs like Bo just blew it all away with those headscratcher IP and engine purchases.

What a shame.

delume · Jan 29, 2019

Sad indeed. Riddick was fantastic in every way.

Pyro · Jan 29, 2019

Read it earlier today. Crazy how similar it sounds to Telltale and the issue of mismanagement. I think the lesson is not every game developer should go on to be a manager/businessman.

IDreamOfHime · Jan 29, 2019

I wonder what that Bo Andersson will do next. He already saw the whole life and death of Grin and Overkill. He must be looking for a hatrick, surely?

Deleted member 5457 · Jan 29, 2019

The Darkness 1 is still one of my all time favourites. Does anybody know if majority of the team who made it is in Machine games or they're still in Starbreeze?

Dr. Caroll · Jan 29, 2019

Ivan said:
The Darkness 1 is still one of my all time favourites. Does anybody know if majority of the team who made it is in Machine games or they're still in Starbreeze?

The original Starbreeze dissolved during the development of Syndicate. By the end of development, Starbreeze was a skeleton crew. A lot of Starbreeze people ended up at Machinegames. Post-Syndicate Starbreeze is Overkill wearing their brand.

DarkDetective · Jan 29, 2019

AmirMoosavi said:
Great article, but I'm still not clear on what the Valhalla engine was and why Bo forked out for it? This press release is vague and I can't find any non-Starbreeze games that were developed with it?:
https://www.mcvuk.com/development/starbreeze-acquires-valhalla-game-engine

There are two pieces on Valhalla in the article:

Also in May 2015, Starbreeze announced it had bought the Valhalla game engine with shares worth 73m SEK (around £6m). The plan was for Valhalla to power all of Starbreeze's games, but the engine itself was near unusable, according to those who had to use it. According to these people, Valhalla was, essentially, a renderer. "There wasn't even a file open button when we got it," one person said. "It was impossible to use. And this is when it all started to get a bit fucked up."

While Bo was jetting off to sign Hollywood deals, back in Stockholm, developers of The Walking Dead were fighting a losing battle with Valhalla. As one person tasked with building it said, bluntly: "Valhalla was a piece of shit." "It was unworkable," said another. "In most cases it was like the engine was fighting against you." Staff said Valhalla lacked a solid core from which the developers could build tools or create content. "It was taking too long to develop to a decent level of usability," one person said. "Valhalla felt to me it was barely 50 or 60 per cent of the way in terms of usability and stability. It was just not good. Like most engines, it had good potential, but it wasn't in a good place for people to properly develop a game. That was the problem. It was just way too far behind in the pipeline."

The developers knew The Walking Dead would not meet its announced 2016 release window and the game was delayed to 2017. But the development issues continued. In 2017, Starbreeze management, finally admitting Valhalla hadn't worked out, tried to rescue the project by forking out for a licence to use Epic's game engine, Unreal instead.

Looks like they didn't complete any game with this engine in the end, which is understandable, as the engine sounds like a huge pain of work with.

SantaC · Jan 29, 2019

Mr.Deadshot said:
The Darkness is already forgotten :(

Enclave wasn't even that good.

The brothers game was good

LiquidSolid · Jan 29, 2019

Ivan said:
The Darkness 1 is still one of my all time favourites. Does anybody know if majority of the team who made it is in Machine games or they're still in Starbreeze?

Read the article, they closed down the original Starbreeze studio shortly after the merger, so they're pretty much all gone. I'm sure a lot of that team has spread out to various different studios by now but most of them did seem to end up at MachineGames.

John Caboose · Jan 29, 2019

Amazing article. The high-flying quotes from the CEO sound about as detached from reality as it gets.

Aangster · Jan 29, 2019

That certainly explains Ulf Andersson's abrupt/bizarre departure back in 2015. Also clears up who Overkill/Starbreeze are and puts to bed claims that the micro-transactions introduced that year were all publisher "505 Games fault".

Accordingly, this news development from 2016 doesn't quite make sense, it appears that Starbreeze were always in control of the Payday IP rights all along?

Triggerhappytel · Jan 29, 2019

Fantastic article, and it's both baffling and inevitable what happened to Starbreeze. I appreciate wanting to grow the company but opening new offices in extra-expensive cities and investing in VR is fucking madness when you have a single hit game under your belt.

It kind of reminds me of the fast expansion of Crytek to be honest, although they had CryEngine to help keep them afloat and thankfully have not gone under yet.

Lucifonz · Jan 29, 2019

Brilliant article, very insightful and interesting. Also disappointing to read the events that took place.

Aangster · Jan 29, 2019

It really looks like Overkill/Starbreeze have thrown their eggs into the wrong baskets.

Payday 3, part of their biggest franchise, is only in design phase. As others have pointed it, it's unlikely to come out under the Starbreeze banner, or at all for that matter.

Mr.Deadshot · Jan 29, 2019

SantaC said:
The brothers game was good

Not really IMHO, but I can see why people liked it.

Deleted member 16876 · Jan 29, 2019

Aangster said:
That certainly explains Ulf Andersson's abrupt/bizarre departure back in 2015. Also clears up who Overkill/Starbreeze are and puts to bed claims that the micro-transactions introduced that year were all publisher "505 Games fault".

Accordingly, this news development from 2016 doesn't quite make sense, it appears that Starbreeze were always in control of the Payday IP rights all along?

I never once believed them when that blame came out because of all the bullshit about the consoles updates needing to be paid for (current gen doesn't need that and yet Overkill mislead people to defend them using that bullshit excuse).

dabbert · Jan 29, 2019

LiquidSolid said:
I never understood how the clowns who ran Grin into the ground ended up running Starbreeze and what happened to Starbreeze's original studio but suddenly everything makes sense. What a shitshow.

Oh god, Grin. Checking wikipedia for the Anderssons and that explains a lot, I had no idea.

LiquidSolid · Jan 29, 2019

Triggerhappytel said:
Fantastic article, and it's both baffling and inevitable what happened to Starbreeze. I appreciate wanting to grow the company but opening new offices in extra-expensive cities and investing in VR is fucking madness when you have a single hit game under your belt.

It kind of reminds me of the fast expansion of Crytek to be honest, although they had CryEngine to help keep them afloat and thankfully have not gone under yet.

Grin's probably the better comparison, especially since this story shares the same management. They gradually worked their way up and peaked with Bionic Commando Rearmed but then they got way too ambitious and over extended themselves, releasing three massive flops in the same year. After that no publishers seemed to want to work with them (Square Enix famously cancelled a FF spinoff they were working on and told them to fax the assets to them) and they quickly died.

Shawcroft · Jan 29, 2019

Fascinating read, thanks for posting!

Always thought their VR plans were a bit of a reach and overly ambitious, but didn't even realize some of the crazy wheeling and dealing all over the world Starbreeze did.

Sad to read some of the snippets from devs. Working on OTWD for so long when the project seemed perpetually stuck in clusterfuck mode must have been tough.

Deleted member 43872 · Jan 29, 2019

AmirMoosavi said:
Great article, but I'm still not clear on what the Valhalla engine was and why Bo forked out for it? This press release is vague and I can't find any non-Starbreeze games that were developed with it?:
https://www.mcvuk.com/development/starbreeze-acquires-valhalla-game-engine

Reading between the lines: Bo Andersson wanted to get Starbreeze into VR during this period. The press releases about the acquisition pitch Valhalla as a VR-ready engine. My assumption is that the original developers of Valhalla had one hell of a demo presented by skilled salespeople, and that convinced Andersson that Valhalla would be a competitive advantage as they move into VR production. Either Starbreeze's developers weren't fully part of the decision-making process or the poor state of the engine's tooling was hidden from them.

A lot of companies have stories about management buying into some badly-fitting technology because of an especially good pitch, and the techies just need to go along and try to make it work.

Technosteve · Jan 29, 2019

I'm happy machine games ran away and made wolfenstein

Silvergun-Blue · Jan 29, 2019

60fps said:
LMAO, this is one of the funniest things I've read this year:

"I've been playing a game all weekend and I've got this great idea, let's do an exploding zombie!"

It highlights just how important it is to have a strong directorial presence in modern game development. Things are tough enough without random crap getting stuffed in at a moment's notice or random shifts in gameplay direction years into production.

Nali · Jan 29, 2019

Impressively detailed writeup. Following Payday 2 over the years, you'd see little bits about these acquisitions pop up on the side as part of the discussion around the game, but PD2 itself kept rolling on like it didn't make a difference.

Never did have a good feeling about TWD, though. Overkill always hyped it up like it was something the Payday community should be excited about, but from the day it was announced, it was mostly met with resentment that the studio was wasting time effectively remaking Left 4 Dead outright with a big pop culture license when they already had their own beloved IP that put a twist on the formula. And then projected release dates came and went with little to no news about the game at all, and you had to wonder when we'd ever see a Payday 3 if the bulk of the studio was stuck in development hell on a project nobody wanted.

Zojirushi · Jan 29, 2019

Fuck. Riddick pretty much introduced to me console FPS and The Darkness is one of my favorite games of all time.

60fps · Jan 29, 2019

Zojirushi said:
Fuck. Riddick pretty much introduced to me console FPS and The Darkness is one of my favorite games of all time.

See above. Get Wolfenstein.

Zojirushi · Jan 29, 2019

60fps said:
See above. Get Wolfenstein.

Played the first one. It was good, in fact way better than it had any right to be probably, but yeah I dunno, I would love to see The Darkness 3 or something.

Harp · Jan 30, 2019

Error 52 said:
I think the lesson here is to never take The Walking Dead license for a game.

That IP is cursed.

Man. This.

Like, there's SO much Walking Dead content and nearly all of it is bad. The comics were good for a while, but they've gone off into a wasteland of rehashed, boring stories. The first Telltale season was great, but everything after faltered, and every other attempt at a video game has been rotten. The show has been terrible since the first episode, but exploded in popularity, and now even the diehard fans are trashing the series' consistent missteps, terrible writing, and nonsensical stories.

I live in Los Angeles. If I walk into any vaguely nerd-related store, be it a board game shop, comic shop, or video game shop (including Gamestop), there's bound to be a ton of Walking Dead merchandise. Walls of those awful funko pop figures, rebranded versions of Monopoly and Risk, and apparel upon apparel, and it's all just so fucking bad.

How did this happen? Anytime I hear "Walking Dead" I want to immediately walk the other direction. It's legitimately repulsive.

Harp · Jan 30, 2019

Am I the only one who liked The Darkness II significantly more than The Darkness? The Darkness is a great narrative shooter. The Darkness II is a fucking stupendous shooter. I can see why some people disliked its refocus from the narrative onto the action, but man that action feels good.

Stef · Mar 26, 2020

So, in the end no news about the fate of Startbreeze and its IPs?

Minamu · Mar 26, 2020

Stef said:
So, in the end no news about the fate of Startbreeze and its IPs?

The company is still alive and expanding, and the reconstruction is over and done with. PAYDAY IP still belongs to the company.

Gitaroo · Mar 26, 2020

Are machine game basically the new starbreeze. Even though I think they dropped the ball with wolf 2. Their next real game better be amazing or they are just another 1 hit wonder to me.

Stef · Mar 26, 2020

Minamu said:
The company is still alive and expanding, and the reconstruction is over and done with. PAYDAY IP still belongs to the company.

So I guess I can start again asking for Enclave II... good!

Minamu · Mar 26, 2020

Stef said:
So I guess I can start again asking for Enclave II... good!

I have no idea who owns that particular IP, ask on their twitter :)

[Eurogamer] The fall of Starbreeze

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