10 Beloved Video Game Studios That Didn't Deserve To Be Shut Down
EA has killed more game studios than Isaac Clarke has necromorphs.
It's easy to forget how brutal the video game industry can be. With the focus always on how developers are pushing creative boundaries and any negative press being filtered through the PR machine, at face value the medium looks like one of the friendliest to work in.
Underneath all of the flashy press showings and marketing though, video games are still a cutthroat business.
Publishers have shareholders to answer to, and if a game doesn't do enough to meet their projections, it can spell disaster for the developers who slaved away assembling the product in the first place. With production budgets spiralling out of control and every company wanting to match the ridiculously high bar set by the likes of Destiny and GTA V, anything less than a smash hit is considered a failure.
It doesn't matter whether the game resonates with critics either, as some of the best studios around have seen their doors closed despite releasing nothing but critical darlings. Killed by publishers who weren't content with getting anything less than every single penny possible from a player's wallet, fans have been left to mourn some incredible developers that were put out of business long before they deserved to be.
10. Lionhead Studios
The studio created by famed developer Peter Molyneux, Lionhead gained attention in the early 2000s thanks to the success of their debut title, Black and White. Taking the experience they learned from making that game and deciding to create something new, the studio hit the big time when it released the original Fable in 2004.
Acquired by Microsoft two years later, Peter Molyneux's team began crafting a follow up to that RPG, aiming to create one of the most ambitious gaming experiences ever. Known for overhyping their games, Fable 2 was a solid title in its own right, but it couldn't live up to the astronomical expectations that had been set for the sequel by the developers at Lionhead.
With their next game, Fable 3, being considered a major disappointment too, Molyneux eventually left the studio for good in 2012 following the completion of the on-rails Fable: The Journey. Without anyone to steer the ship, Microsoft asked the remaining devs to create a multiplayer-focused Fable experience for the Xbox One, before overhauling their whole approach to first-party game development mid-way through production.
With both the developers and the audience lacking any enthusiasm for the spin-off though, Microsoft chose to cancel it rather than reboot it, and closed down Lionhead for good in 2016.