Flaming Fowl Studios, a UK game developer created by ex-Microsoft Lionhead Studios members, has faced a big problem. Their new game, Ironmarked, has been announced and delayed indefinitely at the same time, leading to over half of its employees being laid off. This sad situation shows the current decrease in investment affecting the games industry.
Flaming Fowl told VGC it had to stop working on Ironmarked after their publisher unexpectedly stopped supporting the project last summer. Even after a year of funding and presenting the game to over 30 publishers, the company couldn’t get the support it needed and had to stop making the game. CEO Craig Oman said the problem was that the company’s project was in the middle in terms of size, and most publishers were interested in either small indie games or very big AAA-style projects.
Those who are curious about Ironmarked can check out the demo on Steam. It’s a deckbuilding strategy game (think Metal Gear Acid), which may interest some people. I remember playing Metal Gear Acid, and this kind of game is not my cup of tea. Publishers tend to want games with mass appeal, and it sounds like this is very niche.
“We’ve been working on the game for over a year. We had a publisher, but they pulled out last year around June, and we’ve been self-funding since August. We’ve been pitching to publishers since then, but they all said, ‘the game looks great, the team looks great, but we’re not signing anything right now’.”
Craig Oman
Oman has noticed a big difference between the funding situation now and when Flaming Fowl started working on Ironmarked. After finishing their last game, Gloomhaven, the studio had many offers to work on Ironmarked. However, in the last 18 months, the global economic downturn has made game publishers and investors more cautious about taking risks.
Despite its indefinite delay, the studio has decided to release a demo of Ironmarked on Steam. This decision comes from their past experience working on canceled projects at Lionhead. The leadership team aims to showcase their work and possibly gauge public interest. Players can support the project and potentially contribute to its future resurrection by adding the game to their Steam Wishlists.
The widespread crisis in this industry has led to many job cuts, affecting employees at Flaming Fowl. The team plans to launch a new smaller strategy game by the end of the year, but this won’t save the layoffs happening. It’s a really bad situation, so if you’re into these kinds of games, you can at least try a cool demo.
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