Iron Lore shut down

Games
#1

D’oh. :( Occasionally ran into some of the guys in the past years and had a great time chatting with Jeff Goodsill at GDC 2006 and in Leipzig last year.So, good luck to everyone involved in the studio, I guess…

It is with great regret that we must announce that as of close of business Tuesday, February 19, 2008 Iron Lore Entertainment has ceased active game development. Several unrelated events occurred which resulted in Iron Lore being unable to secure funding for its next project.

-Julian

EDIT: I see it’s already been mentioned here.

#2

Huh. They must be skiing down mountains of coke because I can’t imagine how else the developers of the critically acclaimed and commercially successful titan quest wouldn’t get funded. It’s got to be massive mismanagement behind the scenes.

#3

I think you overestimated the “commercially successful” part…

#4

Aw jeez. That sucks. I liked Titan Quest!

Maybe Michael can give us some inside info.

#5

There was this post where it was revealed that they’ve made little or no money off of TQ (post-development, anyway), so maybe sales weren’t as good as we thought. Our own enthusiasm for it (one of the longest threads on the board!) might be colouring our perception of how successful it was.

#6

I feel like PC gaming really must be in dire straits when solid developers like these guys can’t get funded.

#7

Did DoW Soulstorm get finished then? Or did they basically just turn a master over to THQ and close their doors?

#8

That sucks, Titan Quest was a great game. Moreover, it was very well polished and tested (a rare thing in the world of PC gaming).

I hope someone realizes there was a great team there and hires them for other projects.

#9

Yeah.

That being said, Titan Quest did have serious performance problems, and I imagine that that was probably a factor in sales.

But still, they proved they could make a good game. Not getting funding for another game just screams of publishers not wanting to be involved with the PC.

#10

Could have sworn that I heard/read somewhere that about 750k units of TQ (plus add-on) got shipped worldwide.

Or did they basically just turn a master over to THQ and close their doors?

Seems like it.

-Julian

#11

I’m sad for PC gaming, but I also continue to be saddened for Boston’s economic status. I gotta move, damn it.

#12

Wow, that’s very sad news. Titan Quest and Immortal Throne were absolutely wonderful games. Having just finished IT, I enjoyed TQ+IT even more than Diablo 2.

Assuming the sales were not what we would have expected - I wonder if WOW has made it harder for this sort of game to be successful. I find it hard to imagine a better Diablo clone than TQ, and if TQ can’t move enough units to be a hit, I wonder what could?

#13

That is so wrong. I loved Titan Quest.

#14

Sucky.

#15

I wouldn’t necessarily take it as a PC domedness indicator when we don’t know what happened. They might have missed 5 deadlines in a row on their warhammer game or something.

#16

re: numbers

I don’t have full numbers, but US and UK combined shows only about 300k of the game, and 70k of the expansion.

Of course, I’m sure they sold a couple on steam. Still though.

#17

It’s just the Game developers that seem to suffer mostly in the Boston area, I think it’s a curse. Plenty of other stuff seems to be doing just fine.

#18

I also got the impression that Titan Quest was doing well. For sure better than the majority of games released.

If that wasn’t enough I guess it was a problem of costs going out of scale, or maybe a loss of core devs to other studios.

#19

That doesn’t affect a company’s ability to get funding, as anyone who’d pay for a project doesn’t actually know the employee makeup of a company, for the most part.

Seriously, if that were possible, many companies would’ve failed long long ago.

#20

I’d have bought TQ on 360 and every DLC they put out.

just sayin’