After Wreckreation by Three Fields Entertainment and THQ Nordic was not successful enough, the UK studio will likely have to close down. CEO Fiona Sperry has made this public in a plea for possible partnerships that could save the company.
Three Fields Entertainment, the UK studio that made arcade racing game Wreckreation, is closing down. CEO and Founder Fiona Sperry shared the disruptive news on LinkedIn in a last effort to find new cooperation partners and possibly safe the studio.
She says: “Since the launch of Wreckreation, our small studio has worked incredibly hard — with heart and dedication — to update the game, listen to our community, and deliver the fixes and features players asked for. I could not be prouder of the people I’ve worked alongside or the passion they’ve poured into this project.
But the reality we now face is stark. As an independent studio, we will not see revenue from game sales for the foreseeable future. We have had to self-fund most of this year and all of the post launch content. Without the enthusiasm or financial support from our publisher to continue development, we simply cannot sustain the studio in its current form. Making this decision has been unbelievably painful.”
Wreckreation, published by Austrian Embracer subsidiary THQ Nordic, has released to mixed reviews on 28 October, although the 7.6 user score is significantly higher than the reviewer score of 62. The Steam numbers aren’t any better, though: More devastating than the only 59 per cent positive review is perhaps the fact that only 257 users have even reviewed the game. SteamDB notes a 24 hour player peak of 199 simultaneous players on release day, although it is noteworthy that the arcade racer genre is relatively strong on consoles as well and the PC data is not the be all, end all.
All in all however, the game’s reception and sales were not enough. Sperry hopes that by laying this open, a partnership to safe the company could emerge. “My hope is that by showing this work publicly, someone out there might also see that potential and perhaps an opportunity could still emerge. But even if that hope does not materialise, we want this to stand as a testament to our vision and to the strength, passion, and skill of our tiny team. I truly believe in the potential of this game and in the brilliance of the people who built it”, she says.
Sperry also says that the team will still make sure that the next patch will come out before December: “We will, again at our own cost, ensure the next update that includes a Crossplay feature does get published before Christmas and we hope you and your friends can enjoy the world that we have built together, whichever platform you play on.”
