Among video game companies, few arouse more passions than EA. Not necessarily for good. Receiving a lot of criticism, sometimes undeservedly, their name is synonymous with questionable practices within the industry. It hasn’t helped that a developer, associated with one of their studios, has come out to talk about why one of the biggest failures of 2023 was a terrible idea.
Immortals of Aveum is a game developed by Ascendant Studios and distributed by Electronic Arts that was released for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S on July 20, 2023. The game was a shooter in a fantasy world where shooting was combined with a magic system that, although it looked good on paper, ended up being extremely weak and lacking polish. This resulted in lukewarm reviews, a lackluster reception, and now, reflections on what went wrong from its own creators.
According to one of the members of Ascendant Studios, as told to IGN, one of the reasons why the game has not worked is its budget. Considering that it was overvalued for being the debut project of a studio, he clarifies that the development cost 85 million and that, according to him, EA put around 40 million dollars for marketing and distribution. This gives us a staggering budget of 125 million dollars for a game without any kind of previous guarantee.
The reasons for their failure, according to this developer, is that making an AAA shooter for the current market is a terrible idea. Another developer who was part of the conversation says they don’t understand why it didn’t work. It’s not a sequel or a remake, it doesn’t last 400 hours, it doesn’t have microtransactions or grinding or an empty open world. In other words, all the things that players complain about in modern video games.
That doesn’t mean that the problem with Immortals of Aveum is any simpler than that: it aspires to be a AAA shooter and falls short. It’s a mediocre game, without exceptional ideas, that doesn’t do anything great, nor is it very polished. The whole may have more to do with its failure than the sum of its parts. But the studio’s frustration with the industry and with EA is equally understandable.
