Sony have shut down Firewalk Studios, the developers behind ill-fated multiplayer hero shooter Concord, and confirmed that the game will not be returning to stores. In doing so, they are effectively striking a line through a big, red $200 million in their books – a number that some report is only part of the loss.
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Gone Home studio Fullbright are now making games about horrible toilet spiders
You probably still know Fullbright as the studio behind Gone Home, a delicately experimental first-person yarn about a girl exploring her family home after travelling overseas, and learning about the turmoil in her absence. Picture that game in your mind: the quietness of the hallways versus the crash of a thunderstorm outside, the sickly-sweet 90s décor, the fairy lights and screwed-up balls of paper, the gentle amber pressure of cloistered teenage memories. Now, imagine a faint scuttling behind the skirting boards. A rattling in the pipes. Was there a toilet in Gone Home’s autumnal mansion? I can’t recall, but you should probably steer clear.
Former Disco Elysium devs are working on a spiritual successor at new studio Longdue, though Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov aren’t involved
A spiritual successor to Studio ZA/UM’s RPG Disco Elysium is currently in development at the newly-formed Longdue. It’s set in a world “conceived by the leads” of the canceled sequel.
A representative of Longdue told us that “the studio isn’t ready to talk about specific names at the moment beyond the people mentioned in the press release, but they are looking forward to sharing more about the game and the studio in the future”. They did, however, confirm that Disco Elysium’s lead writer and designer Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov are not involved.
Yet another studio formed of Disco Elysium alumni has announced a cerebral sci-fi RPG, just to confuse you
You have woken to the sound of multiple former Disco Elysium developers arguing inside your own skull. They are bickering about whose game is the true spiritual successor to the rockbottom detective RPG. Is it the unnamed project announced earlier today by new studio Longdue, involving some kind of “psychogeography mechanic”? Or is it this one, XXX Nightshift, a cerebral sci-fi RPG set in a posh polar hotel about a detective “solving gruesome murders, breaking sacred hearts, or just killing bloody time”? It’s not for me to choose the dialogue option now appearing in your own brain. But I will say this: at least the one with the horny name has a trailer.
Sure, why not – third group of former Disco Elysium devs announce “revolutionary new RPG studio”
Those two other Disco Elysium “spiritual successors” were but filthy pretenders, or at best, the thesis and antithesis resulting in this afternoon’s triumphant synthesis.* The real Disco Elysium spiritual successor is whatever they’re making at Summer Eternal, a just-announced “art collective/RPG studio” founded by a group of, once more with feeling, former Disco Elysium developers.
The press release for this particular Disco Elysiulike has the most actual names on it of the three we’ve learned about this week. It is also, by some distance, the most outwardly socialist of the lot. It accompanies a website, featuring some blood-red all-caps political manifestos and a fairly exhaustive breakdown of Summer Eternal’s worker cooperative structure. Amongst other things, the studio will let people who buy their games form a non-profit within Summer Eternal that gets a share of the revenue, and has a say on company direction.