3/6/2023 0 Comments Rune 2 hand replicaIt was a major undertaking-Goldberg claimed that Human Head's "comprehensive failure" to meet objectives left the game in far worse shape than the publisher had realized. “And Epic said thank you to us-thank you for not abandoning this game, not walking away." He also credited Epic for being “a fantastic partner” throughout the process. We still have a great opportunity, because we own everything," Candler said. I called all my friends and all my favors in, and said, I need your help, guys. Once the wheels were turning, they brought in more people-an animator, a programmer, an art director, a sound guy-and committed to an extensive overhaul of Rune 2. “So not only do they abandon us-full stop, full abandonment, total stab in the back-I mean, again, who does that? But then we don't even have our property, the source code, to be able to update the game.”Ĭandler’s first hires were Symmetric Games co-founders Dan Nikolaides and Vic Lopez-"They're fucking Unreal wizards, some of the best in the business," Candler said-who started the process of reworking the game with older builds and assets. “They refused to give us the source code that was our property, to be able to update and fix the game for the community,” Goldberg said. Several expressed interest, but the recovery effort was hampered by yet another bizarre twist: Most of the developers Candler spoke to wanted to look at the source code and assets to evaluate the scope of the job, but according to Goldberg, Human Head wouldn't hand it over at first. They actually did everything they could to prevent us from supporting the product."Ĭandler immediately began reaching out to all the top Unreal developers he knew, attempting to put together a team to keep the game going. "We could've transitioned the game if they weren't able to participate anymore, we could've transitioned naturally-here's the source code, we'll help you find somebody. And we would've gotten through a successful launch together," Candler said. "They could've kept their mouth shut and collected the money, and we would've been like, yup, here you go. They actually did everything they could to prevent us from supporting the product. Making the timing even more surprising, Human Head left behind money by bailing out early: Candler claimed the studio would have earned $67,000 on the final milestone, due after release, and another $110,000 for supporting the game post-launch. And then Wednesday morning, the 13th, the first thing I see is people saying, look, Bethesda makes an announcement that they've founded a new studio in Madison, and all the employees of Human Head are now employees of Roundhouse Studios, a Bethesda studio." We got initially, really strong reviews about the game, saying that this is kind of a cool indie game. "We launched the game ourselves, we had a great day on November 12. "We did a ton of great work, set up a lot of interviews and a lot of streams, spent a lot of money, and they never showed up," Candler said. The developer agreed to support the game post-launch while Ragnarok worked out a longer-term plan, but Candler said Human Head ghosted them on that, too. It refused to say why it was closing so suddenly, Rune 2 executive producer Matt Candler said, and did not allow the publisher to attempt to hire any of its employees as contractors. Human Head told Ragnarok that it was shutting down on November 7, less than a week before Rune 2 was set to go live. "Show up for no marketing, don't support streamers, make an announcement the day after the game launched that you're no longer going to work on it and you've joined some competitive company-I mean, what more could they do?" this is probably the playbook on how to do it," Ragnarok general counsel Sam Goldberg told me.
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