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Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios has laid off over half its staff, just a few weeks after the release of the studio’s first game.
The news comes via Polygon, who reports that around 40 people have been laid off from the studio, according to three developers who work there. Ascendant Studios’ website lists the developer as having a 100-plus person team, with Polygon’s sources estimating that the layoffs represented almost half of the studio. Several others were laid off from the studio in recent weeks as well, one former employee said.
Poor sales were cited as the reason for the layoffs in a meeting held by Ascendant CEO Bret Robbins, who founded the studio in 2018 with the goal of creating a next-generation “single-player first-person shooter unlike anything the world has seen in decades.” EA published Immortals of Aveum under its “Originals” banner and released the game on August 22 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC to mixed reviews. GameSpot’s Immortals of Aveum review said the title suffered from repetitive combat, a lackluster story, and a “difficult-to-navigate control scheme.”
It seems the magic-based FPS failed to find much of an audience. One former developer at the studio told Polygon that Immortals of Aveum is likely one of EA’s worst-selling Original titles, though no specific sales figures are cited. A quick look at SteamDB shows that the game’s concurrent player numbers peaked at just 751 players on Steam shortly after launch and have bounced between just above 100 to as low as 29 in the last week: not exactly promising statistics for a new AAA release. As Polygon points out, those players numbers could be a result of Immortals of Aveum’s sky-high technical requirements, which may have resulted in many PC players being unable to effectively run the game on their machines.
