GB Feature: Iron Lore Entertainment Closure Interview

[GameBanshee News]

Iron Lore Entertainment co-founder Paul Chieffo took the time to chat with us about the studio's closure and how the current state of the PC gaming market may have contributed to it.

GB: When did it become apparent that you might be forced to shut the studio down and how were the employees notified? What was the general mood around the office in the days leading up to the closure?

Paul: We kept the employees in the loop with regular meetings and special meetings whenever there was a significant event in the sales process. Our experience is unfortunately not that atypical for a developer - it can be a risky business. We all knew that, so we tried to keep everyone up to date as much as possible on the ups and downs as we went along. It was quite a roller coaster in the last few weeks, as we were pulling out all of the stops to find interim projects and any other sources of funding to bridge the gap. Our team was absolutely fantastic, as always, and stuck with Iron Lore until the very end. We didn't lose a single person, even when things were looking grim in the last few weeks. It's one of the things I'm saddest about in this whole thing - that such an incredibly talented, dedicated, and passionate team had to break up.

Given all of that, the mood of the company was all over the place. We were all hoping we could pull it out, and when we would get good news or it looked like we unearthed a project that was going to save us everyone was pumped. But then there would be a snag, or the project would fall through and we'd be disappointed. This continued right to the bitter end, as we were doing everything we possibly could to save the company. When time finally ran out, I think we were all a little bit in shock.

[Brother None]

Quote:

For example, Titan Quest was one of the top selling games in Russia last year, but no significant revenue was generated from that. Why? Because the game has to be sold for a pittance due to rampant piracy.

I doubt that's exactly true.

I mean, not about the rampant piracy, Russia has some of the worst laws when it comes to that of the world, but on the other hand...without piracy, do you honestly think you could ask the average Russian to shell out 60 USD for a game? That's, what, 1380 rubles? I'm sorry, but there are people working in Russia (outside of the major cities) who make 1500 rubles a month. Pardon them if they'd like to be able to buy games for less than a monthly salary.

Honestly, not too happy about his answer there overall. Titan Quest had a lot of problems, including problems with the DRM causing the game to crash. That causes loss of sales too.

And as I said before, there's a lot of culpability for the model that publishers use for developing studios like Iron Lore too.