Famed Swedish studio Starbreeze & Overkill going tits up - Shock twist: The Andersson's were running the company! They said it wouldn't happen again!

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Link to Eurogamer that has a pretty comprehensive piece:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-28-the-fall-of-swedish-game-wonder-starbreeze

Quote from a relevant part where the Andersson's company get bought in such a way they became majority shareholders and continued to do what they do best which is to sink ships.

The story of "new" Starbreeze, those familiar with its history have told me, is really the story of Overkill, an independent developer set up by the people who used to run Grin. Grin was the Swedish studio founded by brothers Bo and Ulf Andersson in 1997 that's perhaps best known for building 2009's Bionic Commando for Capcom. Grin went under after its deal with Square Enix to make a Final Fantasy spin-off codenamed Fortress collapsed. So Bo and Ulf founded Overkill and made Payday, a small-scale co-op FPS that found a modest audience on Steam when it came out in 2011. But Overkill ended up in financial difficulty, too. Enter Starbreeze.

In 2012, Starbreeze was itself in dire straights after the troubled development of Syndicate for publisher EA. Before Syndicate even launched in February 2012, key staff left to form Wolfenstein developer MachineGames. "MachineGames started up and were heavily recruiting, and it wasn't difficult for them," one person who worked at Starbreeze at the time told Eurogamer. "By the end of Syndicate we were just a small team finishing up the game."

The Syndicate team was crushed, but Starbreeze still had the Brothers team. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was led by outspoken designer Josef Fares and was Starbreeze's first owned intellectual property, but funding was needed to complete it. Effectively, Starbreeze was on the brink of bankruptcy. Enter Overkill.

At this time, Payday was doing well enough, but it was not considered a smash hit. Overkill needed funding for development of the sequel. So Starbreeze and Overkill cooked up a plan to save both companies. 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.

To expand a bit on the brothers, that's the part I find fascination. Bo and Ulf started GRIN in the nineties, recruiting young people out of high-schools and eventually released their often delayed arcade racer on the PC called Ballistic, the future of eSports! You raced in a twisting tube and there where technically no max speed. Gotta go fast!
It didn't sell well but they had some decent software bling during an era when that was king and dotcom money were still passed around, so they survived but stayed under the radar for a while.
Bandits was their next game, not that great, no one played it.
After that they ported GRAW 1-2 to PC for Ubisoft, we're not up to the 360/ps3 era.

And finally they made a good game: Bionic Commando ReArmed for the XBLA/PSN, a remake of the NES classic and an offshoot of the larger Bionic Commando game they had been working on.

The big AAA Bionic Commando wasn't that great, cost a fortune and despite all the delays and re-workings it ended up feeling sloppy and indecisive in spots and the story was stupid. It wasn't as tight and trimmed as it could have been, completely unlike the ReArmed game, that shit was tight.
It was tight because Ulf Andersson had nothing to do with it. He was the companies Miyamoto not out of merit or experience but because he wanted that role and his brother was the CEO that called the shots and put him in that role. He was not good at it, changed his mind a lot, tried to micromanage things he shouldn't and when people needed answer on how to progress he didn't have a clear idea on how to progress.
I mentioned that the story was stupid earlier, guess who liked to spruce up the story?

Let's look at the games Ulf is credited with, 2009 is the "shit we need money!" year:
2009 - Bionic Commando, Game Design/Director - not that great but it got their full attention
2009 - Terminator Salvation, Game Design/Director - "hey we're making a terminator game! We have 6 months to make it!" - it wasn't good but for something created in under 6 months by a small team it's pretty ok.
2009 - Wanted, Weapons of Fate, Game Design/Director - yet another movie license they picked up and turned into a game in a matter of months. It had some slivers of neat ideas.

We shouldn't forget Bo, the moneyman, he was the one that scrounged up those licensing deals and cashed the checks and forced people to work at a breakneck speed.

What did Ulf not work on?
2008 - Bionic Commando Rearmed, Supervising Creative Director - that's a good game! And he never went close to that project!

Grin had talented people working for them but big-bro and lil-bro was a detriment and with time they got into Starbreeze to repeat the same formula that worked so well last time. Bo as CEO, Ulf as designer, now Starbreeze have been living on borrowed time.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Ah, Christ. There goes Payday 3.

 

[User names must be unique]

Ah, Christ. There goes Payday 3.

They'll sell the rights to it so the can at least afford a van to live in down by the river.

Coming soon Payday 3: gotta get that money, from <EA/Activision/Ubisoft> featuring a roster of 14 gender queer anti-capitalist bank robbers with over 13 million wardrobe and hormone treatment combinations available. Order the deluxe collectable VIP season pass holders edition for 1.5% discount on the first 6 DLCs

 

[Polish Hot Dog (spicie)]

Ah, Christ. There goes Payday 3.

Considering the state of PAYDAY 2 after only about 2 years of release, and OVK's The Walking Dead:
Do we really want PAYDAY 3 to made by Starbreeze/OVERKILL, if at all?

 

[RJ MacReady]

Ah, Christ. There goes Payday 3.

They'll sell the rights to it so the can at least afford a van to live in down by the river.

Coming soon Payday 3: gotta get that money, from <EA/Activision/Ubisoft> featuring a roster of 14 gender queer anti-capitalist bank robbers with over 13 million wardrobe and hormone treatment combinations available. Order the deluxe collectable VIP season pass holders edition for 1.5% discount on the first 6 DLCs

Considering the state of PAYDAY 2 after only about 2 years of release, and OVK's The Walking Dead:
Do we really want PAYDAY 3 to made by Starbreeze/OVERKILL, if at all?

I read the OP article in full the other day and I find it extremely hard to believe that Payday won't be sold to another publisher, either with or without Overkill. As the article says, its success was subsidising the entire company so it's clearly the only asset worth buying and I could easily see Payday 3 being, say, a Ubisoft title. Starbreeze games (excluding Brothers) are already scuffed as shit so it'd be a sidegrade at worst to end up in the hands of a shitbox AAA.

As for Starbreeze, I always felt they didn't smell right so I wasn't entirely surprised when this story broke back in December. I think it was the nauseating amount of licenced content they crammed into Payday and Dead by Daylight mixed with the mediocre-at-best art and animation that tipped me off.

 

[John Titor]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(cancelled_video_game)

Was Square Enix justified in axeing this project?

 

[Deus Ex Macarena]

As a fan of Payday 2, I've seen Overkill decline with it's shady practices for a while.

This all kinda start in 2014 when they went crazy with the DLC for the game. Most of the new heists and weapons required around £5 ($. While you didn't need to buy the DLC heists to play them, it required the host to have the DLC meaning you either needed a friend to have the DLC or risk a random lobby.

Though to balance this out every October there was an event that gave out 'free' characters, weapons, and heists. The first one wasn't too bad as stuff would be released as people liked the official Payday group on Steam. The second one required you to purchase either DLC or buy Hotline Miami 2, with each purchase adding fuel to their 'Hype Train'. It's also worthy to point out one of the rewards was a teaser for Overkill's the Walking Dead. In 2014. The last day actually announced you can jump in Payday 2. Yeah, you couldn't jump until that event.

There was also a DLC you could preorder to add fuel to the 'Hype Train'. They didn't tell you what you were preordering but you could still buy it. It was a minigun and rocket launcher. Not much to say about that really aside from it was £3.99

Biggest shitshow was in 2015 during the October event, when despite reassuring us that there would be no micro transactions and loot boxes, the first day of the event announced Loot Safes, that worked similar to TF2's crates. These safes gave skins to weapons, many for DLC weapons you had to pay for, and also gave a stat boost to your gun. You had a chance to find a safe after each successful heist but you had to pay for a drill to open it. Naturally people were furious and Overkill caved, you didn't need to buy a drill to open a safe but it still had the issues of stat boosting skins.

Up until 2017 nothing really happened until the H3H3 pack, when the original April Fool's joke of having Ethan from H3H3 Productions as a heister became a real thing. It costed but proceeds went to their defense fund after being sued by that Parkour Manlet.

2018 became a shitshow for them at the end of the year as their last event in October gave us three mediocre heists that didn't give us any chance to loot and just showed how Payday 2 was just a Call Of Duty Zombies knock off, where you wait five minutes for a timer to count down before moving to the next area. Last good heist was a Shacklethorne Auction in August.

Then Overkill's the Walking Dead came out and that caused a lot of upset, especially since it had been announced 4 years ago. People hated it and the fact you were pretty much buying a season instead of a full game reeked of greed.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(cancelled_video_game)

Was Square Enix justified in axeing this project?

There was more to it.
Justified..they had something.
Directions. None of it
The project was wacked from the get go but they got a bhnch ot money.

The tale of Strarbeeze going dark is that of Triton, that's a sad day. They will probably be bought up by THQ Nordic and I can only hope they use the Shiny clause where some foundation members have to step away before a deal can be done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(cancelled_video_game)

Was Square Enix justified in axeing this project?

not that Fortress was much beyond the concept art.

 

[DragoonSierra]

Triple post: not that Fortress was much beyond the concept art.

it was pretty good art tho

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

it was pretty good art tho

Triple triad: it was just art thoug

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

This was Triton - later Starbreese - in 1995

Sorcecry and everything with have gone forgotten, but they were a big fat demo house at one point. Doing the impossible.