Report: Hyenas was Sega's most expensive game ever

Late last month, it was revealed that Creative Assembly and Sega had decided to cancel Hyenas, a shooter that we compared to both Payday and Apex Legends after we got to play it at Gamescom.

At the time, we didn't get a whole lot of details about the cancellation, but Volound and VGC have plenty of details to share about the whole thing, which includes things like poor management, a mismanaged game engine switch, unwillingness to take any risks and a general lack of direction. But there is another thing that stands out the most in the report, as it turns out Hyenas was Sega's most expensive game ever - including Shenmue which for a long time was the most expensive game ever. An anonymous developer says:

"I forgot to mention that Hyenas was Sega's biggest budget game ever. Towards the end, there were people from Sega Japan more or less permanently at the UK office, this has NEVER happened the whole time l've worked at CA, they occasionally came to visit and check how a game was looking but as I said previously, generally hands-off."

Shenmue cost $70 million to develop, and if Hyenas was even more expensive, that means it's a serious candidate to be the most costly video game shutdown of all time.