Tales of Kenzera: Zau Developer Puts Team on Notice for Redundancy as it Looks for Funding - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 November 2024 / 2,773 Views
Tales of Kenzera: Zau developer Surgent Studios is having financial difficulties as it has put its team on notice for redundancy as it is looking for funding.
"We've decided to put the work of the Surgent games division on hiatus while we secure funding for our next project," said the studio. "In the meantime, we've unfortunately had to put our team on notice for redundancy.
"Everyone at Surgent worked incredibly hard to create Tales of Kenzera: Zau - a game that truly comes from the heart. Their passion, creativity, and dedication are nothing short of extraordinary. There are still a couple of exciting updates coming down the pipeline for Zau."
The studio did reveal the team "has created a prototype for a bold new project. It's harder, edgier, and more visceral than our first game, but it retains all Zau's high-octane combat and cultural depth. And we're looking for a partner."
Surgent Studios in July of this year was hit with layoffs, according to multiple employees who posted on LinkedIn that they had been laid off.
Help us bring our vision to life. https://t.co/ULAKd6wYxX pic.twitter.com/tZjnSqEP3A
— Surgent Studios | ZAU OUT NOW (@surgentstudios) October 18, 2024
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.
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This was a decent game from what I played but I'm just not huge into these sort of games. The market is flooded with so many metroidvania's it's hard to stand out.
I agree especially because I found this one to be pretty unique compared to the others. EA is such a big company though they are probably more focused on their big games.
I'm kind of suspired they even still invest in games like this and I'd honestly would to love hear their reasoning for why.
They might have all but monopolised the sports sim market, especially after buy Codemasters just for the F1 contract (outside of NBA and MLB) but they can't just rely on those. As indicated by It Takes Two' sales, there's money to be made in other game markets too. They also own Respawn and Bioware, so with games like this, It Takes Two, Sports games and adventures from those latter 2, they care covering all their bases.
Yet, if they wanted to focus on bigger games, why bother publishing this at all? Why not let Focus, Devolver or someone else do it as they might put in more marketing.
Wasn't there some drama created by the dev? something like the studio is all black, and wont hire whites ect. They worked with Sweet Baby Inc, and that ontop of his remarks, put alot of certain people off. I think there was some sort of drama, and dev came out and said he was jewish, so he couldn't be racist himself or something. Then calling others racist for not supporting his game, because the lead is a black character and its based on african folk lore. It was a mess. Basically, devs need to stop putting themselves in these PR mess ups, it effects game sales.
Political messaging can backfire. Calling Consumers of a product your trying to sell racist, isn't going to help sales any. It has a Metacritic score of 76 from reviewers, and a 4.6 from users. In my opinion its a okay looking metroidvania, but the game is probably a ~6 out of 10. Critics over praised it, because they wanted to support a black dev, makeing such a project.... while user scores are probably abit lower than it deserves.
I gotta admit: you're throwing a lot out there that I was not aware of. You are correct that Sweet Baby Inc. consulted on this game (as listed in the credits), but I'm inclined to take the other stuff you're saying with a grain of salt atm. I did see the game's creator had an extensive interview on Sacred Symbols that piqued my interest.
And SBI's involvement in general strikes me as strange here since virtually nothing in Tales of Kenzera itself has any Portlandia bullshit. It's just a story about grief/parental loss refashioned with African mythological elements.
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