• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Ascendant Studios has reportedly furloughed majority of its staff

Draugoth

Draugoth

Gold Member
immortals.jpg


In a recent post on LinkedIn, Morness claimed the furlough has affected "around 30 folks." This was further corroborated by Polygon's Nicole Carpenter, who added the studio had yet to comment on the matter.

However, a recent employee post possibly indicates something about the studio's future. Just yesterday (April 9), level designer Chris Herrin said he was looking for work.

ViaGamedeveloper
 
Red5

Red5

Member
xrnzaaas said:
They are currently making singleplayer Iron Man and Black Panther games. Plus they're supposed to do another Jedi game to complete the trilogy.
Click to expand...

Not to mention Dragon Age 4 and Mass Effect 4. Also Dead Space Remake sold well, Jeff Grubb is talking out of his ass.
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
When you start up Immortals they show you a message from the devs talking about how this is their first game, they are proud of what they accomplished and thank the player for supporting new ideas in the industry.

It made me feel a bit bad about how things turned out for them... but after playing it for a few hours I can't say I'm surprised the game failed. I'm sure they worked hard on it but it kinda sucks. Maybe this team jsut wasn't meant to be.

Mr Hyde said:
After the failure of Immortals and Dead Space EA will probably never bet on single player gaming again.
Click to expand...

That Monster Hunter clone they published didn't seem to stick around either. Also wait until DA4 fails too.
Seems like only the Respawn Star Wars games have worked out for them.

it's a shame really. People shit on EA too much but in the past few years they have at least attempted to make some decent single player games.
 
Last edited:
Aion002

Aion002

Member
Damn... That's a pity. I liked Immortals quite a bit.

The story is boring and the art style is meh, but the gameplay is pretty cool and the levels are fun.
 
P.Jack

P.Jack

Member
Immortals or Aveum is sure to find appreciation in the future, did many good things, not least the amazing soundtrack. As someone who prioritise gameplay over all, Immortals of Aveum really managed to pull me in with looks and sounds, areas where I think it excels. It does not strongly resemble anything else either.

The rest might not be amazing but I’ll take it.
 
Shakka43

Shakka43

Member
fur·lough
noun
  1. suspension or discharge of a worker or workers on account of economic conditions or shortage of work, especially when temporary.
    "half of employers say they will put the majority of their staff on furlough"
verb
  1. Suspend or discharge (a worker) from a job, especially temporarily, on account of economic conditions or shortage of work.
    "the company temporarily shuttered two plants and furloughed 8,100 workers"
 
Last edited:
nial

nial

Member
Mr Hyde said:
After the failure of Immortals and Dead Space EA will probably never bet on single player gaming again.
Click to expand...
Why? It's an EA Originals game, they don't even own the IP.
EA Originals is a label within Electronic Arts own EA Partners program to help support independently developed video games. EA funds the money for development, and once it recoups that, all additional revenue goes to the partner studio that created the game. That studio also gets to keep the intellectual property rights for whatever it creates, and even has creative control over the project.
Click to expand...
 
M

mdkirby

Gold Member
How are people just learning about the word furlough now? It happened to about 25% of all employees during the pandemic, and was mentioned by name continually by the news and those affected.
 
StueyDuck

StueyDuck

Member
Draugoth said:
immortals.jpg


In a recent post on LinkedIn, Morness claimed the furlough has affected "around 30 folks." This was further corroborated by Polygon's Nicole Carpenter, who added the studio had yet to comment on the matter.

However, a recent employee post possibly indicates something about the studio's future. Just yesterday (April 9), level designer Chris Herrin said he was looking for work.

ViaGamedeveloper
Click to expand...
Having now actually played the game, there's definitely alot of sweet babyesque stink to the game so one can hopes those are the people shitcanned..

It's a game that comes so close to being decent at times but so many design choices and philosophies kill any momentum it gains, and I mean that with all aspects, gameplay included.

The story feels like it's written by a Kim Belair 🤣 definitely a game you wish you could skip all the cutscenes which I have found you can't really. Only in game dialog.

But even things with gameplay, why have a hover and blink ability and not let the player chain them. Why use a borderlands weapons loot system when you could of just made a more general call of duty style weapons system. Why is there shitty gangsta rap trap beats in the high fantasy OST. Why Why Why Why... there's just so many flaws that it's hard to list without taking a whole thread to do so
 
xrnzaaas

xrnzaaas

Member
Red5 said:
Not to mention Dragon Age 4 and Mass Effect 4. Also Dead Space Remake sold well, Jeff Grubb is talking out of his ass.
Click to expand...
With DA4 and ME5 and there are no guarantees they'll be singleplayer only, even though I would love that. I really hated how they tried to integrate the multiplayer component to past Mass Effect games.
 
nial

nial

Member
Ozriel said:
I think the point was that EA is on the hook for the losses.
Click to expand...
I think you'd need a much better example than Immortals of Aveum for what Mr Hyde said to be the case. Let's see how Star Wars Jedi 3 does.
 
Last edited:
C

crackajack

Member
P.Jack said:
Immortals of Aveum really managed to pull me in with looks and sounds, areas where I think it excels.
Click to expand...
Strange. I think it sucks in these areas most obviously. It just looks off for some reason. The whole FSR upsclae tech does affect it more than I excpected. It is supposed to be 60fps but motion feels like it is 30fps, or less, and it is blurier than 60 is supposed to be. The base resolution of 720 makes everything anyway not really like a crystal clear 4k pic, even though there is ton of detail in geometry, everything looks kinda like a PS3 remaster. And the sound has a god awful bug that was already known at launch and is still not fixed. With 3D Audio turned on voices sound like recorded in a tin can, or blown speakers or whatever. The game could just have some internal off setting to disarm that problem, but you have to turn it off on your system to not scramble the sound.
I am not far in it, but calling the female leader magician repatedly Sir, on her demand, feels just mad and does not bode well for the entire writing that started anyway a bit too vague for the grand war we are supposedly facing and with misplaced cocky dialog.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fbh
P.Jack

P.Jack

Member
crackajack said:
Strange. I think it sucks in these areas most obviously. It just looks off for some reason. The whole FSR upsclae tech does affect it more than I excpected. It is supposed to be 60fps but motion feels like it is 30fps, or less, and it is blurier than 60 is supposed to be. The base resolution of 720 makes everything anyway not really like a crystal clear 4k pic, even though there is ton of detail in geometry, everything looks kinda like a PS3 remaster. And the sound has a god awful bug that was already known at launch and is still not fixed. With 3D Audio turned on voices sound like recorded in a tin can, or blown speakers or whatever. The game could just have some internal off setting to disarm that problem, but you have to turn it off on your system to not scramble the sound.
I am not far in it, but calling the female leader magician repatedly Sir, on her demand, feels just mad and does not bode well for the entire writing that started anyway a bit too vague for the grand war we are supposedly facing and with misplaced cocky dialog.
Click to expand...
I appreciate the soundtrack and the visuals, not necessarily from a technical standpoint. The gameplay is mediocre and the story is pretty boring and badly presented. But I still think it’s worth a playthrough.
 
Mr Hyde

Mr Hyde

Member
nial said:
Why? It's an EA Originals game, they don't even own the IP.
Click to expand...

Immortals bombed and EA lost a lot of money, which will make them hesitant to fund new single player games, especially new IPs. Doesn't matter if they own the property or not.
 
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
As side info being furloughed means you dont get paid and dont work, but still an employee. They'll call you back when there's work back on the table to be done.

So the studio is probably trying to secure more projects asap hoping to tell workers to come back. If the situation was a lost cause, they'd just gas them.
 
nial

nial

Member
Mr Hyde said:
Immortals bombed and EA lost a lot of money, which will make them hesitant to fund new single player games, especially new IPs. Doesn't matter if they own the property or not.
Click to expand...
If that was not the case after Mass Effect Andromeda bombed, it certainly is not with Immortals of Aveum.
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
crackajack said:
Strange. I think it sucks in these areas most obviously. It just looks off for some reason. The whole FSR upsclae tech does affect it more than I excpected. It is supposed to be 60fps but motion feels like it is 30fps, or less, and it is blurier than 60 is supposed to be. The base resolution of 720 makes everything anyway not really like a crystal clear 4k pic, even though there is ton of detail in geometry, everything looks kinda like a PS3 remaster. And the sound has a god awful bug that was already known at launch and is still not fixed. With 3D Audio turned on voices sound like recorded in a tin can, or blown speakers or whatever. The game could just have some internal off setting to disarm that problem, but you have to turn it off on your system to not scramble the sound.
I am not far in it, but calling the female leader magician repatedly Sir, on her demand, feels just mad and does not bode well for the entire writing that started anyway a bit too vague for the grand war we are supposedly facing and with misplaced cocky dialog.
Click to expand...

Yeah maybe it's good on a high end PC but on Ps5 it's pretty much awful in every way.
The visuals are very uneven, at times it looks next gen and then you enter some room and it looks like a remaster of a Ps3 era game, and even the spots where it does looks next gen on paper end up suffering from awful image quality, a low res looks and notorious shimmering when moving the camera. The art direction is pretty awful too.

The performance is the worst part though, it "targets" 60fps but it never really seems to get close. The framerate jumps all over the place no matter if you are fighting or exploring, which feels awful and some of the boss battles are specially bad with the drops. There's this dragon boss you fight early on and whenever he uses his main attack it feels like the FPS goes bellow 30.

It's a game that gives up image quality and destroys the framerate (which is specially bad for a First Person Shooter) all for the sake of some new graphics tech.
Maybe the idea was to make it "future proof", like a game that would shine on Ps5 pro or Ps6 or something, but then you can't complain about people not buying it on the current hardware.
 
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
user friendly said:
How perfect, haha.

A lot of employees at our company were furloughed during covid.
Click to expand...
Not just during covid. I knew people working at a peer company before covid at your typical steady consumer goods company that got furloughed. First time ever knowing someone who got hit with it.
 
J

JimmyRustler

Member
Pray, venture forth: ‘Tis said, ‘go woke, go broke,’ a mirthful refrain of our times, where societal tides clash with financial fortunes, akin to the whims of Fortune’s wheel.
 
PSlayer

PSlayer

Member
I had to go to google to see what furlough actually means. It says "temporary unpaid leave"...was that the case or were they just fired?
 
Hudo

Hudo

Member
EA could've made a Tiberian Sun remaster for less than the budget they*ve wasted on this shit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Immortals of Aveum studio has reportedly furloughed the majority of its staff
21
2K
Crayon replied
Gi.Biz: Cloud Imperium reportedly hit with layoffs (Star Citizen Developer)
20
2K
cash_longfellow replied
Kotaku has learned that Reikon Games, the studio behind Ruiner, has cut about 80% of its staff or around 60 people.
Game Dev
14
2K
LordCBH replied
Something Wicked Games, a studio founded in 2022 by ex-RPG veterans from Bethesda and Obsidian, has reportedly laid off most of its staff
Game Dev
33
4K
YeulEmeralda replied
Smilegate Barcelona, the studio established in 2020 to develop an open-world AAA console title, has reportedly been closed and all employees let go
News Game Dev
25
2K
StereoVsn replied
Top Bottom