The closure of Embracer-owned studios continues — this time it’s developer Piranha Bytes that’s reportedly shut down. Piranha Bytes is behind the Gothic, Risen, and Elex series.
Wasn’t Piranha Bytes not profitable for quite some time?
Their games certainly had a community of fans, but I don’t think those are enough to keep a whole studio afloat.
Just thinking out loud, I did not look at any numbers, but in my head what’s done them in is not producing games that feel good to play. I loved Gothic 3 and Arcania at the time, but I’d choose any other 3rd person RPG that actually has snappy controls over the more modern stuff like Elex and I feel like that’s the mainstream opinion going around.
Yeah, far as I know they also started to struggle with Risen already, as cost started going up for 3D RPGs with open worlds. If you are a niche creator, that’s a problem as your niche cannot be endlessly expanded.
I never tried ELEX or ELEX 2 (kinda should, but eh, bit late now), but they looked fine. Nothing noteworthy, but decent. But the thing is, I have a long long list of just RPGs that I still want to play that are on my backlog, like even Baldur’s Gate 3. And now Dawntrail for FFXIV just released. It’ll be years more before I get around to ELEX. I wish they had gone more something more artsy in style than just generic-3D open SciFi world, as that ages badly. Look at Mass Effect 1 and so on.
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Wasn’t Piranha Bytes not profitable for quite some time?
Their games certainly had a community of fans, but I don’t think those are enough to keep a whole studio afloat.
Just thinking out loud, I did not look at any numbers, but in my head what’s done them in is not producing games that feel good to play. I loved Gothic 3 and Arcania at the time, but I’d choose any other 3rd person RPG that actually has snappy controls over the more modern stuff like Elex and I feel like that’s the mainstream opinion going around.
Yeah, far as I know they also started to struggle with Risen already, as cost started going up for 3D RPGs with open worlds. If you are a niche creator, that’s a problem as your niche cannot be endlessly expanded.
I never tried ELEX or ELEX 2 (kinda should, but eh, bit late now), but they looked fine. Nothing noteworthy, but decent. But the thing is, I have a long long list of just RPGs that I still want to play that are on my backlog, like even Baldur’s Gate 3. And now Dawntrail for FFXIV just released. It’ll be years more before I get around to ELEX. I wish they had gone more something more artsy in style than just generic-3D open SciFi world, as that ages badly. Look at Mass Effect 1 and so on.
Seems like we’re in the same boat, haha.
I also have a big backlog, and there are far more interesting options than their stuff.