Immortals of Aveum developer says making a AAA shooter today is a 'truly awful idea'

Immortals of Aveum was one of the bigger flops of last year. A shooter with some potential, Ascendant Studios seemingly had far too much pressure put on its shoulders for a first release. The game did okay when it came to reviews, but it didn't manage to make a lot of money by the sounds of it.

One reason behind that could be the costs, which according to one anonymous developer were $125 million, with $80 million spent on creating the game and another $40 million on marketing. Yet another example of games having ballooning budgets that would require millions of sales to recoup.

"At a high level, Immortals was massively overscoped for a studio's debut project," the developer told IGN. "The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution. Sure, there was some serious talent on the development team, but trying to make a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea, especially since it was a new IP that was also trying to leverage Unreal Engine 5."

We gave Immortals of Aveum a 9 when we reviewed it. What did you think of the shooter?