It was pretty obvious the game wasn't finished and how many times it changed hands. I feel like there is a story there and no one goes out wanting to make a bad game, so I just want to know what happened.

Most of it is out in public. THQ planned a sequel after the original Homefront, and we all know what happened with THQ. Crytek bought up the Homefront IP and developers to continue work on it. Their new studio was mismanaged, missed payments and wages, which caused employees of Crytek UK to stop working and file for grievances. Crytek sold the game to Koch Media, who handed it over to Deep Silver to finish up and publish the game.

Holy shit this is out today? Well... Is it any good?

Big ambition, small budget. This came over to Deep Silver from the THQ bankruptcy, right? THQ considered Homefront its Call of Duty type franchise (even though the first one was something of a critical flop) and put resources into the new one and Deep Silver probably thought it could buy the game, finish it, and put it out as a moderate hit. It seems like the game was too expensive to finish properly and not likely to sell that well given its somewhat tainted franchise name, so they eventually decided to just complete it to the point it would pass cert and shove it out there to recover as much money as they could from the whole debacle.

Not a great plan for their long term reputation but maybe they think this will just further tank the Homefront brand and won't blow back on them.

What I want to know is why release NOW. We are one week after Uncharted and less than a week after Doom, two huge games (with at least one of them guaranteed to be huge.) We're also a week away from Overwatch. Nobody is going to buy this game just because they want something new to play because there is plenty of big stuff out right now. Why not release it in mid-June or in July when there's not much big coming out? At least then you'd get some summer boredom sales.

@sackmanjones: Seems to be about on par with the first game, if that.

Triple A Euro-developers are pretty much on par with Kickstarter drama. I still believe the ultimate tell all book on video game development would be Square on FF15.

I'm surprised they were able to even ship a game less than two years after Crytek sold the IP to Deep Silver. Even with the game being pretty far in, having a completely different team pick up someone else's code and continue on would've been crazy.

@rikiguitarist: I think they also got sued was it by Epic with the unreal engine I recall something happening that they had to basically redue the whole game. I could totally be thinking of a different game haha

Well, we're at least getting a QL, that's the most important thing. Hopefully it'll be entertainingly bad, if something.

@probablytuna: They sold the studio along with the game so it wasn't a different team but the same team with a new name.

And I think people have mostly answered your question. It started out as a project that Crytek was working on for THQ. When THQ went bankrupt they purchased the IP and brought in Deep Silver to publish it. But they faced some financial trouble down the road after some of their other games underperformed, so they sold the IP and their UK studio that was working on it to the owners of Deep Silver, Koch Media, who also purchased some of THQ's other brands. So, long story short, while the ownership of the IP and the name of the studio working on the game changed, the same team has been working on this game all along. Of course new owners could want a new direction or changes to certain aspects, so there was obviously not smooth sailing, plus the team lost funding twice and that surely effected moral and some people might have even jumped ship when they didn't get paid on time, but there has been the same leadership team working on this since the start.

@raven10: Ahh ok I must've missed the 'development studio being sold' part of the story. I thought Deep Silver just created an entire new team to continue the game.