After a troubled development, Sega has pulled the plug on online shooter Hyenas as it makes several cuts at its European developers.
In what in hindsight seems inevitable news, Sega has announced it’s cancelling Creative Assembly’s team based shooter Hyneas, due to ‘lower profitability of the European region.’
That appears to be a reference, not to the sale of games, but the cost of operating studios in Europe, with Creative Assembly being based in Horsham, England.
‘We have reviewed the title portfolio of each development base in Europe and the resulting action will be to cancel Hyenas and some unannounced titles under development. Accordingly, we will implement a write-down of work-in-progress for titles under development,’ said the company in a statement.
There’s no indication of what the other games are, or if they’re also Creative Assembly titles, but Sega Sammy also owns Endless Space developer Amplitude in France, mobile developer Hardlight in Leamington Spa, Angry Brids developer Rovio in Finland, Football Manager creator Sports Interactive in London, and Two Point Studios in Surrey.
If Sega was looking to cut costs, then Hyenas does seem an obvious target, as it’s failed to generate much excitement since its initial reveal and even Sega themselves described it as a ‘challenging’ project.
Creative Assembly is a talented studio, with many veterans of Alien Isolation working on the game, but not only was Hyenas a new IP but, like most new live service titles, it was greeted with great suspicion by many gamers – a problem that Sony also suffers with its live service plans.
Hyenas has you playing the part of a space pirate looting large cargo ships, where a lot of the valuables turn out to be Sega-related merchandise, such as Sonic the Hedgehog action figures.
It was unclear whether it was meant to be free-to-play or not, with Sega seeming to imply that they’d changed plans halfway through, to go with the free model.
Creative Assembly’s other project at the moment is Total War: Pharaoh, although that’s being made by Creative Assembly Sofia, so it’s not clear what the next title from the main UK studio will be.
[Update: Eurogamer has reported that the cancellation will result in layoffs at Creative Assembly, although there are no details at the moment.]
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