No official word yet but there are a lot of people on the grape vine confirming that United Front Games, developers of Sleeping Dogs, Modnation Racers and Smash+Grab have closed their doors.
Huh, that's a surprise. Just goes to show that one failed game is all it takes these days. Though I didn't personally like Sleeping Dogs, it seemed to have a lot of positive buzz around it. I just always expected it did good, but maybe I'm wrong. Bet Vinny will be disappointed.
Developer makes best the GTA clone ever, some idiot executive gets the idea that the sequel should be a free-to-play multiplayer game, and now they're forced to close. Well, that sucks.
Werent they doing some sleeping dogs mmo? Wonder if that did it? I liked sleeping dogs a lot, probably the last open world crime game i managed to actually finish.
Well, that is unfortunate. Was hoping they would at least get one more crack at an open world game but I guess Smash & Grab didn't sell enough to keep them afloat.
If they just made a proper sequel to Sleeping Dogs, they probably would still be here. Although I can't say Triad Wars was their decision, probably SE's.
A lot of you guys are making a lot of assumptions about Sleeping Dogs and sales. The game started development in 2007, came out 5 years later, and, although exact figures are hard to come by, seems to only have sold a bit over 2 millions copies or so. The sales are a guess but that's going off the last figures out there from Square Enix.
And as far as Triad Wars, unless you have seen sources I haven't, who knows who wanted to make that game. They might have wanted to for all you know. And given Sleeping Dogs was viewed as a failure, who was funding a straight up sequel?
Don't mean to be a downer I just don't see a lot of realism in here. Good team that made some quality titles for sure. The business of AAA isn't easy though.
@artisanbreads: I don't really see anyone in here being unrealistic. This sort of thing is unfortunately not all that surprising these days. Most people realize how volatile game development is, and UFG certainly never had the sort of smash hit you need to secure a place in the industry for the long term.
That being said, people can be realistic about the situation while still being sympathetic to the people that worked there and showing appreciation for the work they did - regardless of whether or not it found commercial success.
@chaser324: Trust me I 100% agree on that. Perhaps realistic isn't the right way to put it. I just see a lot of "SE made them do Triad Wars" assumptions when we don't know that at all and "well no SD 2 now" when that wasn't coming anyways. I think people see SD as a big success but it was very much a cult hit. Again, it spent 5 years in development.
Of course I feel for the devs. To me SD was just a pretty solid game but I see why some like it a lot. I did enjoy the Hong Kong action vibe it was going for.
I guess bottom line for me is just AAA development is a bitch and I am not shocked at all by this stuff happening, as unfortunate as it may be. And I don't assume a developer can just pick and choose their AAA projects as much as some seem to think. It's real hard out there.
What a shame, Sleeping dogs was one of my favourite games of the last few years. Hopefully at some point this week Vinny can find the time for one last visit to Hong Kong.
That sucks, video game development is a really tough business. At some point this year I will go back to finish Sleeping Dogs. I wonder what Square Enix is going to do with Sleeping Dogs in the near future.
I was literally talking about Little Big Planet Karting yesterday and how much of a bummer it was that it went offline. So last night, I bought and paid $9.99 for Modnation Racers as a substitute, and as of today it was still showing online servers anyway. :/
It sucks to hear though. They made some really good and fun games. Really enjoyed Sleeping Dogs as well.
That really sucks. I was really interested in Smash+Grab after the crew played it on UPF and Sleeping Dogs was an amazing game that almost didn't come out.
Aw man, that's a bummer. The Sleeping Dogs multiplayer thing always struck me as a bizarre follow-up, but Smash+Grab looked liked it coulda been a bit of fun. Obviously a proper sequel to Sleeping Dogs woulda been great, but I imagine they would've wanted that too if they could.
I actually played a fair bit of Smash+Grab over the weekend after Jason played it on UPF. It was actually a lot of fun but it did need some variety and balancing but it was listed as Early Access. Still, showed a lot of potential and I was still holding out for a Sleeping Dogs 2 at some point. I don't think it did amazingly well but perhaps well enough to warrant a sequel. I just can't think of an open world game that did melee combat as well.
That's a huge bummer. Sleepy Dogs was one of the few games I bought dlc for because I just wanted more...
Makes me wonder if the game was only ever viable for Square Enix because they could pick it up for cheap after it was already pretty far in development (and mostly funded by Activision up to that point). Maybe funding a sequel from the start would've been too expensive/too much of a gamble for what it ended up selling?
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