League of Geeks – the studio behind Armello, Jumplight Odyssey and Solium Infernum – has announced that it is going into “hibernation for the foreseeable future” following a decision to cut its workforce by 50 per cent late last year.
At that time, the studio Said This was impacted by a combination of “rapidly rising operating costs, deteriorating AUD/USD exchange rate, poor early access sales” [of starship management sim Jumplight Odyssey]and an unprecedented return to funding opportunities across the industry”. Along with layoffs at the studio, it confirmed that development of Jumplight Odyssey would be put on hold “indefinitely”.
Months later, the studio’s fortunes haven’t improved. Posted on the League of Geeks website“With the economic situation in games as it is right now, we’ve decided to put LoG into hibernation for the foreseeable future and take a break for a while,” wrote studio co-founders Ty Carey, Blake Mizzi, and Trent Kusters.
“The majority of our team members have moved on to exciting new endeavors, and those who remain are taking a well-earned break over the next few months,” the post further said.
“We’re not sure when (or if) we’ll resurrect this great beast, but we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished, both in terms of the experiences we’ve created together, the great developers who made LoG a world-class development environment, the partners we’ve inspired, and of course, the community members who believed in what we built, how we built it, and supported us fiercely in those beliefs. Now it’s time to rest, play a bit, and look for other opportunities.”
Though the studio is shutting down, League of Geeks says all of its games will remain online and continue to be supported — though active development will cease. Jumplight Odyssey will, essentially, be on indefinite hiatus, but the development team still wants to bring it out of Early Access in the next 12 months. “This is unlikely to be the fully realized v1.0 release we had originally planned,” it notes, “though we will try to find some way to incorporate the game with our limited, remaining resources.”
Development of turn-based grand strategy game Solium Infernum will also cease, with League of Geeks stating that “sales revenue cannot fund further active development or DLC.” However, the studio says it still has “a few goodies” up its sleeve, including bug fixes and minor content – so players can expect “one or two small updates” before it’s over forever.
As for Armello, the studio’s first game released in 2015, it will “continue to move forward much as it has over the past few years, rotating out seasonal content and providing a hit of heroism for our beloved adventurers”. Meanwhile, the Armello board game will not be affected.
“Making videogames has been incredibly hard these past few years, but the smart and loving people we get to work with, both inside and outside of LoG, make this crazy workload worthwhile every day,” the studio’s post concludes.
