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RIP United Front Games

a916

Member
Such a shame to see so many talented people let go, I feel like if they had the right IP they could've really shined.
 

FStop7

Banned
200px-Seymourstill.JPG


you can sleep now buddy, it's okay.
 

Mik2121

Member
Woah, really?
I liked Sleeping Dogs a lot, Modnation Racers had a lot of cool customization stuff and the track editor was great, and Little Big Planet Karting was so much fun!

I hope everything goes well for the team, wonder what they were working on until now...
 

Akai__

Member
I never understood why they moved from Triad Wars to Smash and Grab. Both titles seemed so underwhelming.

Still sucks of course. Hope they find something new to work on.
 
An incredibly talented team, with horrible upper management.

- they first had True Crime HK get cancelled and unfinished
- they invested serious time and money into Triad Wars
- they go and make the same mistake with Smash and Grab

It's not that Triad Wars and Smash and Grab are bad games, but the huge 'single player open world' audience just wanted SD 2. Heck a SD expansion could have brought in more dollars without overhauling the entire game.

Complete nonsense. United Front can't do shit if they don't have the money to do it and Square Enix obviously didn't want a Sleeping Dogs 2, so what exactly were they meant to do?

This really sucks. I was pretty disappointed by Modnation Racers and LBP Karting but Sleeping Dogs was such a fantastic game and I was hoping they'd only build from there.

Best of luck to all the people being layed off.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Now that I think about it, Sleeping Dogs was the only open world game I ever played through completely twice. Once at launch and once a year or two later to try the DLC.

Great game.
 
Also, didn't SE have ridiculous sales quotas for several of their games around this period due to trying to remain in the black as a result of FF XIV being a complete shitshow in the beginning and the money they were spending on Luminous Engine and the 8 billion incarnations of FF XV?

Yeah, Sleeping Dogs was eventually profitable but SE deemed it a failure because it didn't meet their ridiculous sales expectations.
 
I'll never understand why they didn't start working on a sleeping dogs sequel after the praise of the first...

because they don't own the IP and it's not their call.

It's such a boom or bust industry for devs like UFG and others in similar positions. I mean we can look back in hindsight at decisions but with Triad Wars or Smash and Grab it's clear they were trying really hard to come up with something that stuck, which is what every dev tries to do these days. There is no exact science to what is and isn't going to hook with gamers.
 

KenOD

a kinder, gentler sort of Scrooge
My heart goes to them. They seemed so excited with the launch of their latest game and it seemed like it would be profitable enough.

Best of luck to all, hopefully Vancouver has more work for you all.
 

Hip Hop

Member
That's on Square Enix, the company that keeps having terrible business decisions.

I just can't see that when the original Sleeping Dogs was a big undertaking. It's a miracle it even happened.

Would have been a tough call to make a second one, you would need a lot of money to do so.
 

DJIzana

Member
Doesn't surprise me. Whoever thought Smash and Grab would be anything bear as good as Sleeping Dogs was is delusional. Wonder what will happen with the IP now?
 
Sleeping Dogs is one of my favorite games of all time, sad to hear this. Good luck to everyone on the team, hope each and every one of you land on your feet.
 

SilentRob

Member
An incredibly talented team, with horrible upper management.

- they first had True Crime HK get cancelled and unfinished
- they invested serious time and money into Triad Wars
- they go and make the same mistake with Smash and Grab

It's not that Triad Wars and Smash and Grab are bad games, but the huge 'single player open world' audience just wanted SD 2. Heck a SD expansion could have brought in more dollars without overhauling the entire game.

I don't really see how the management can be made responsible for this. An independent developer can't fund an open world game like Sleeping Dogs by themselves and Square Enix obviously wasn't interested in funding it. SE was ready to fund development of Triad Wars, so they went for it. After it they had to go at it alone and thus developed another smaller Early Access Multiplayer Game.

By the way, is Smash + Grab worth trying? Heard some encouraging things about the game.
 
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