Immortals of Aveum launched on Xbox Series X|S last year, failing to meet EA’s expectations and followed by layoffs at Ascendant. One former employee has now said that despite Ascendant Studios and EA spending around $125 million on the game, “trying to make a AAA single-player shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea.”When speaking anonymously with IGN, a former Ascendant employee says that Immortals of Aveum cost around $125 million, and that it was likely too ambitious for its own good.”At a high level, Immortals was massively overscoped for a studio’s debut project,” the former employee said. “The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution. Sure, there was some serious talent on the development team, but trying to make a AAA single-player shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea, especially since it was a new IP that was also trying to leverage Unreal Engine 5. What ended up launching was a bloated, repetitive campaign that was far too long.”Another anonymous employee who is still employed by Ascendant has praised the game as it’s “not a sequel or a remake, it doesn’t take 400 hours to beat, has zero microtransactions, [and] no pointless open world grinding. Although not everyone loved it, it reviewed pretty well, currently sitting at a 74 on OpenCritic and a Mostly Positive on Steam. No one bought it.”That same employee also praised the company for its working environment and didn’t attribute the layoffs to “gross mismanagement and greed,” only a difficult market to break into.“There’s plenty of layoffs due to gross mismanagement and greed, but there’s also plenty that happen because this is a stupidly volatile market that requires mountains of capital to participate in at a professional studio level,” the employee said. “For all the things Ascendant did right (paying people well, an entirely remote studio, little overtime until the end, chill environment with lots of freedom to grow, respecting QA, hiring juniors, etc.), it did not work out.”Ascendant Studios’ debut game, Immortals of Aveum, launched to mixed reviews last year, picking up a Metacritic score of 76 on Xbox Series X|S and 69 on PS5 — here on TrueAchievements, it’s earned a user rating of 3.6/5. Unfortunately, due to the game’s poor sales, Ascendant laid off “about 45% of its employees,” a former employee told Polygon in September. In an interview with Windows Central in November, Ascendant Studios’ CEO Bret Robbins attributed one of the reasons for Immortals of Aveum’s poor sales to its shared launch window with the likes of Starfield, as well as Baldur’s Gate 3’s popularity.I enjoyed my time with Ascendant’s debut game, which I wrote about in my Immortals of Aveum impressions. While my article only covered the first few hours, my enjoyment carried through the rest of the game for the most part. As a breakout game from a new studio, it was a pretty impressive example of the talent Ascendant had in its team of 100 employees.Immortals of Aveum hasn’t managed to steal a spot in our list of the best FPS games on Xbox, but if you’re looking for your next bullet-filled adventure, check out the other games on the list!
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