What are the details of the commission? I would think it was a simple matter of "make another Saint's Row" and Volition took it from there.

While I can't stand The Amazing Randy...

... I want Gearbox to ship BROTHERS IN ARMS 4!!!!
With GTA V's success at whatever it's become...

... Saints Row will definitely return (quickly).

I wish it would return to its origins as a GTA-clone and build from there. I've grown bored of over-the-top ridiculousness... but... to each their own.

Their last few games weren't very good, unfortunately. I am not very surprised by these news.

Volition made some games I've really enjoyed in the past, but now, after they had devolved into making politically charged garbage like the Saints Row reboot? They deserve their fate.

One of the main criticisms of Agents of Mayhem was its paucity of high quality missions. Ditto Saints Row reboot. It is as if they have completely forgotten they are supposed to be in the business of making fun games.

Good riddance, I guess.

you do know that there was a new SR game last year? that it flopped is kinda the reason why Volition is closing down... SR did also a lot better when it had its own identity, from SR II and III, than when it was a straight GTA clone.

by the way, Rockstar is apperenlty working on GTA VI

It's always sad to see a developer with such a legacy go down.

But then Saints Row 2 and Red Faction: Guerrilla were probably the only actually good games I liked.

Oh, and all that "go woke, go broke" nonsense? Those two games were hella woke. A decade of making bad games makes you go broke.

I blame the players, that is, us, for not being able to manage our money properly so that the company would have good sales figures. (that's a joke: Volition's two last games were meh)

The parent company, Embracer Group, is in a difficult position due to a failed deal worth $2 billion with, according to rumors, the Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, and everyone who cannot provide the necessary income will be cut off.

Do you think they would stop there with Volition closure, Campfire Cabal cancellation (no games), laid off at Gearbox Publishing? I don't think so. I expect more studios to go down soon after they release their games. The future is grim.

Damn it! I bet that in the future if someone wants to play a game, you have to develop it yourself!

The Volition announcement mentioned that the (game development) business is now very challenging, or something. I wonder what that means, what has changed or was it always like this (for the past decade or so)?

Too many game publishers and developers around nowadays (including indies), all fighting for the money of the same consumers?

People buying less games nowadays, due to high interest rates and the war in Ukraine?

It costs too much to develop games nowadays because you have to make 8x more detailed textures nowadays than a couple of years ago, and that costs 8x more as you have to paint each small pixel by hand, TWICE?

Since covid lockdowns are mostly over, people don't stay inside their homes anymore playing games, hence use less money on games? Especially in China?

All of the above?

It's just the usual corpo speak for "We fucked up big time and got taken behind the barn for it".

If Volition did anything good recently, they would still exist.

Wasn't it two poorly performing games at least in this case? Agents of Mayhem seems to have been such a failure that everyone quickly forgot about it again right after it was released ...

I'd say giving the fanbase and customers the middle finger over choices in design based on DEI and other bs is a bigger factor than a game just not performing well.

Though looking how Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft and most gaming companies seem to be circling the drain, gotta wonder if an AAA company crash will happen and let us start nearly from scratch.

Also makes me wonder if they would step back from requirements and giant projects and go to something more reasonable... instead of 100Gb games, go to 1-4Gb games. Ignore trying to go for hyper realism and target a max hardware technical level and polygon count, which would likely go a ways forwards making a console a 'standard' to last 20 years to which everything will get emulation support or ported to and with no reason to change hardware for a long while.

But maybe it's a pipe dream. Though i've refused to touch the last 2 generations of consoles, so it's not like i really care.

It was. At some point I bought it for 5 bucks but still couldn't be bothered to do more than just take a quick look.
It was Saints Row without anything that made Saints Row worth playing.

But I of course am story and environment focused, characters are important to me. There are of course plenty of people who play play multiplayer and who don't care for that at all.

I suppose that game development has become more expensive, partly due to high-resolution textures, more detailed models, and as a result, the need for a larger workforce that requires higher salaries. Additionally, according to rumors, western companies are also obliged to spend money on ensuring their games comply with new diversity standards. Inflation erodes the value of the dollar, which is used as the pricing benchmark, resulting in higher prices, which have already increased to $70. The population is rapidly becoming poorer due to the same inflation and increased spending on essentials.

Indie developers are forced to turn to Kickstarter or seek influential investors in order to create high-quality games. After a game is released, even large successful companies have to downsize their workforce.

COVID has also had some impact. There was a surge in sales followed by a sharp decline, which greatly affected streaming services. I believe game sales also declined slightly after that surge. The conflict in Ukraine has also had an impact, as it deterred many buyers from Ukraine and Russia. The former simply couldn't afford games, while the latter had their usual payment methods like VISA and Mastercard banned, and they weren't even able to look at games from most major publishers.

Artificial intelligence could take on part of the development cycle, leading to even further reduction in the number of developers.