EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"

This is the first time I’ve heard of this game

"It's not a sequel or a remake, it doesn't take 400 hours to beat, has zero microtransactions, no pointless open world grinding..."

All of that sounds pretty great, though. I hadn't heard of this game until now, so I'm wondering how efficient they were with that 40 mil in marketing

Or maybe the idea is good, but the execution is bad. Maybe meeting strict deadlines meant the game had to be pushed out unfinished, or concepts had to be cut or changed. I don't know jack shit about this game, but there are a lot of things worth looking into besides "These games just don't sell these days"

Editing to add that it's currently 60% off on steam, sitting at a "mostly positive"

Immortals of Aveum launched in August 2023 amidst one of the busiest years of game releases in history, bookended by behemoths like Diablo 4, Starfield, and Baldur's Gate 3. Ascendant Studios' self-styled "Call of Duty with magic" experiment was compelling enough, and I personally think it deserved more attention, but it ultimately missed EA's expectations by enough of a margin that about 45% of the studio's workforce was laid off shortly after release.

Oof! That must be hard to stomach. Knowing it's actually a quality product, but because the stars didn't line up, you are let go...

Why is it an awful idea? Sounds like my kind of game?

The headline is pretty misleading. The full quote states this being the studios debut game made several factors major problems. UE5 as the engine, a highly competitive genre, and a new IP made nearly insurmountable obstacles. For comparison, Doom Eternal, their obvious AAA competitor, was from a veteran studio with a legendary IP built on literal decades of custom engine experience. On the other hand, a game like Ultrakill can compete by having an incredibly tight scope.