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Saints Row
GRTV News - Saber CEO comments on why Saints Row developer shut down
Some harsh words from Matt Karch. Or are they realistic?
Audio transcription
"Hello there, welcome back to GRTV News, I'm Alex as usual going through the afternoons latest and greatest when it comes to gaming, technology, entertainment, whatever you like, whatever you love, we always have it here for you at GRTV News and in the wider Gamereactor Network as a whole, so if you like what you see and you want to see more, be sure to check out Gamereactor wherever you get it from for more gaming reviews, gaming previews, movie reviews, series reviews, exclusives, interviews, world news, sports news and of course so much more. Without further ado, today we're talking, well we're taking a bit of a step back in time if you will to August 2023 when the Saints Row's developer Volition was shut down. Now we've only just had these recent comments from an interview with Matt Karch who is the Sabre CEO but essentially we're going back to that point to figure out what went wrong with that developer and why they're no longer around. Now Volition, of course the developer behind Saints Row, also made the reboot in 2022 which was met with lukewarm to quite poor reception really, it didn't seem to please fans of the series, it didn't seem to attract any newcomers and it was a bit of a bomb for Volition. Therefore a year later the studio was shut down and no more to make any more Saints Row, it seems like the franchise is pretty dead as well. In any case, Matt Karch speaking to Gamefile very recently was asked about the situation and addressed it rather bluntly. He said the Saints Row team is gone."
"Why are they gone? They were so expensive for what they were. They didn't know what they were building, they didn't have any real direction, it couldn't last and so who's going to fund them for the next game after that disaster? The days of throwing money at games other than maybe the GTAs of the world is over. It's over. The business needs to mature, if it doesn't the whole business is in trouble. So basically, although he's being very blunt he's basically saying that you can't make a disaster in today's gaming world, you can't just keep throwing money at a franchise if it's proven to be a flop. Even recognised names like Saints Row can't just automatically generate money or automatically generate trust that even if one game proves to be a bit of a flop, the next one will come about. We've seen a lot of this sort of sentiment with a lot of franchises in recent years and I just thought it was interesting to highlight here. Something like Dragon Age The Veilguard for example, being heavily criticised and I think a lot of people might not understand especially from the gamers perspective. You might look at Dragon Age The Veilguard flopping and think well good because that means they'll learn for the next game. But we live in an age now where if something flops there's probably not going to be a next game, at the very least for a while. It takes years and years and years to make these games and so Matt Karch despite his bluntness here is very correct in the fact that if you make one, what he calls a disaster, it's very unlikely that someone's going to look at you and give you the funding necessary for 5 to 10 years of development for a sequel to a game that wasn't seen as initially very good in the first place. Now this is fairly new, relatively new I would say within the past 10 to 15 years, this is something of a development that we've seen within the games industry but it feels very very prevalent now with layoffs and things like that. But even if you don't make a disaster, even studios like the ones that make HiFi Rush, Tango Gameworks, they released one of the best games of the year at that time and yet they were shut down still by Xbox. It's one of those things and we saw Redfall as well, for example Arkane Austin, the studio who made Prey which was again received really really well, shut down, no second chance despite them having a pretty reliable track record before Redfall. So I just thought it would be interesting to get your guys' words on Matt Karcher's words. Do you think he's being too harsh? Do you think he's being more realistic?
Why do you think that developer Volition isn't around anymore? Let me know all that and more and I'll see you tomorrow for some more JRCV News. Goodbye."
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