The life of a video game developer must feel like a roller-coaster ride. Everything is up and then down over and over, and the whole time it feels like your stomach is gonna fly out of your face — but maybe you’re having a good time?
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":619445,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"D"}']The former employees of Impossible Studios are having a down day. Epic Games is shuttering that developer less than six months after forming it out of the ashes of Big Huge Games, which dissolved in the 38 Studios fiasco.
We’ve reached out to ask Epic what went wrong, but a spokesperson only provided the following: “Our statement on the community site is the only statement we’re making on the matter.”
Here’s the statement that Epic founder Tim Sweeney wrote in a blog on the developer’s site:
We’re closing Impossible Studios.
When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team. It was a bold initiative, and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.
In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with three months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo.
This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.
In May, developer 38 Studios ran out of money and laid off the staff of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning developer Big Huge Games, which it owned. In June, Epic came to the rescue of those people when it hired most of them to establish Impossible Games. Epic put the studio to work on Infinity Blade: Dungeons.
But Impossible will never release that game.
Epic closed the studio without it ever releasing a game. As Sweeney noted, Infinity Blade: Dungeons, a sequel to the iOS action RPG franchise, is now without a studio and in development-purgatory.
We will continue to update this story as more information comes to light.