Flaming Fowl Announces and Shelves Ironmarked Due to Lack of Funding - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 23 April 2024 / 3,326 Views
UK-based developer Flaming Fowl today announced and shelved deckbuilding strategy game Ironmarked due to a lack of funding.
A demo for Ironmarked was made available on Steam and Flaming Fowl is asking those who enjoys it to Wishlist the game as it will allow the team "to gauge interest and help us re-pitch the game once the industry has recovered somewhat in the future."
Flaming Fowl CEO Craig Oman in an interview with VideoGamesChronicle revealed they had a publisher who ended up pulling support last summer and they have been self funding the project since August.
"We've been working on the game for over a year," he said. "We had a publisher, but they pulled out last year around June, and we've been self-funding since August. We've been pitching to publishers since then, but they all said, 'the game looks great, the team looks great, but we’re not signing anything right now.'"
He added, "I think it's partly because we're a mid-tier size game. Budget wise, we were originally pitching at around £5 million, but it just seemed like there was very little opportunity in that ballpark. People were either looking to sign stuff for a few hundred grand, or up to the £20-40 million range."
Oman said it is much harder to get games signed than it was just a few years ago.
"As soon as we finished Gloomhaven, we signed Ironmarked," he said. “We had multiple offers. But then a year and half later, we've gone back to a lot of the same publishers and they say they're no longer looking for projects like this."
Flaming Fowl is running out of money and has had to layoff employees. The studio is down to around nine people now, from around 30 people.
"Friday was the last day for most of the people at the company," said Oman. "We're down to about nine people now, from around 30 people we were working with. It's been difficult… yeah. I just hope they all find work quickly, because that's the really painful thing.
“I've worked in the industry for a long time. I've gone through redundancies, and it typically always leads to something better. There's always that opportunity to discover and you’re forced to think about what you want to do next."
Oman is hopeful those laid off are able to find work quickly, however, the environment is different from when he was laid from Lionhead in 2016. Once Lionhead closed, he and and a few others from the studio formed Flaming Fowl and licensed the Fable franchise for the card game Fable Fortune.
"I'd say it's nearly impossible today [to do what we did]," he said. "I know people who have tried to start studios in the last nine months and it's been impossible for them. When Lionhead closed, that was the tail end of the crowdfunding craze, [and] even we didn't get our target via Kickstarter."
Oman says if the situation in the gaming industry continues with the lack of funding the amount of layoffs are going to continue.
"We're losing game projects, we’re going to lose studios, we're going to lose people: people are going to move to different industries," he said. "If this is what it’s going to be like, developers are going to move elsewhere to more stable industries."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
