Ascendant Studios has reportedly downsized again, just a little over six months after laying off nearly half of its staff. This time, the Immortals of Aveum developer stopped employing dozens of its remaining workers.
- Game Developer reported the news on April 10, citing a LinkedIn post by Phoenix Labs principal engineer Kris Morness. He said Ascendant Studios “has furloughed the majority of their staff,” or around 30 people.
- Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter further confirmed the information, but added that she “[hasn’t] been able to confirm numbers, and Ascendant hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment.”
- Ascendant Studios laid off 45% of its staff last September due to poor sales of its debut game, Immortals of Aveum. Morness, who worked at Ascendant from August 2022 to May 2023, noted that the move impacted 50 people and “there’s been attrition since.”
- According to his estimates, around 40-45 employees remained at Ascendant before the furlough. If this is true, there might be almost no one left on the team after the latest move.
Immortals of Aveum launched at a price of $70, with its total budget estimated at over $125 million. According to one developer, the game’s sales were only a “tiny fraction” of initial projections.
It also peaked at only 751 concurrent players on Steam, with first users also criticizing the title for many technical issues and poor optimization. Immortals of Aveum currently has a 74% rating on the platform based on more than 1,300 reviews, but its recent rating is “Mixed” (65% positive).
Despite the poor launch, Ascendant founder Bret Robbins told GamesIndustry.biz earlier this year that “when we did go on sale in November, and when the huge breakout games started to quiet down a bit, suddenly we had five times the sales that we had earlier.” He hoped that sales would continue to pick up and more people would play the game.