Norwegian video game publisher Funcom has signed up to shut down The Outsiders, the Stockholm-based game development studio behind the awards-winning rhythm-based first-person shooter game Metal: Hellsinger. The closure is part of a sweeping, company-wide restructuring exercise involving a series of layoffs across teams in the publisher stable. Creative Director and studio head David Goldfarb also made the news public on Monday, declaring the whole Metal: Hellsinger team was being released, though he declared a strong willingness to resume where the team had left off and do it in some new guise, saying, “we are not giving up, and we are going to try to continue on in some new form.”
The Outsiders, founded in 2015 primarily by Battlefield veterans, was bought by Funcom in 2021. The studio’s sole released title, Metal: Hellsinger in 2022, instantly developed a passionate fanbase for its innovative combination of FPS gameplay and music, where a player has to synchronize his movements in time with a thumping heavy metal soundtrack. Whereas the studio had also previously canceled a fantasy action game, Darkborn, in 2020, their dedication to ongoing support for Hellsinger, with many DLC tracks and patches, following release signaled a huge investment in their IP.
This closure is especially surprising in the aftermath of recent financial success for the parent company. Funcom dropped the massive multiplayer online role-playing game Dune: Awakening last month, the developer’s best-selling title in history, selling one million units within two weeks. Although, despite success, Funcom previously announced job cuts at the beginning of the month, referring to the breaking up of the Dune: Awakening team as a necessary shift from high-intensity development to live service support. The shut-down of The Outsiders, which claimed to provide much-needed financing to the Dune: Awakening project, comes as fuel to the fire of speculation around the motives for such corporate actions.
The shut-down is a sober reminder of the volatility that has become the hallmark of the modern video game industry. Not even a studio of one of the most unconventional and critically acclaimed independent films in recent history, and one which also helped the publisher achieve record-breaking success, has been immune to drastic corporate restructuring. As Goldfarb and crew find a path forward, the skill behind one of the oddest shooters recently has now been scattered, spotlighting the perpetually looming precarity experienced by development houses as a whole.
