The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2023–2024
Immortals of Aveum: a ~$125M shooter that sold barely enough to matter
Ascendant Studios bet ~$125M on a single-player magic shooter; weak sales got half the studio laid off a month after launch.
Ascendant Studios · Electronic Arts · 2023-08-22
What happened
Immortals of Aveum was a single-player first-person magic shooter developed by Ascendant Studios and published by Electronic Arts in August 2023. Ascendant was founded in 2018 by Bret Robbins, a veteran of Dead Space and Call of Duty, and built the game as its debut AAA project.
The game was expensive to make: development cost roughly $85 million, and with EA's marketing and distribution added the total bill came to about $125 million. It launched with mixed reviews and weak sales, and less than a month later Ascendant laid off roughly half of its workforce.
In 2024 the studio closed down entirely. The roller-coaster of a single AAA bet on an unproven IP, priced and built like a franchise, ended with the studio gone and the IP shelved.
Why it happened
- A brand-new studio front-loaded roughly $85 million of development on an unproven single-player IP, leaving no margin for a lukewarm debut.
- The game competed in a shooter market dominated by live-service giants, and a $70 price point for a new magic-shooter IP did not convert enough buyers.
- The whole studio was built around one product, so weak sales meant the layoffs and closure hit everyone at once rather than a single team.
- Publishing and marketing costs roughly doubled the dev budget, so the game needed far more sales than its mixed reception ever produced.
The lesson
A debut studio pouring ~$125 million into one unproven single-player IP puts the entire company on the first game's sales — and when a $70 magic shooter lands mixed, the studio itself is the cost.
Sources
- Wikipedia — Immortals of Aveum
- Rock Paper Shotgun — Immortals of Aveum cost $125 million and no one bought it
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