Radon Labs - Files for Bankruptcy

joxer said:
These are the so far the worst news of this year. I can't believe this. Why doesn't this happen to studios that develop stupid games.
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It usually does. Or at least, companies that make stupid decisions.

The only one of their products I'm familiar with is Drakensang. Which was a good game and from what I've heard it was pretty successful for a European title. But as others have said, 100 employees seems like a lot of bloat for a company that has only released a few major titles in the last decade or so. Maybe they had big plans for the future and were staffing up?
 
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So dtp then? Maybe they should give away less Ferrari rides, then. I wasn't aware that Radon was such a big studio. But given the salaries for such a staff alone, I can easily imagine that they are almost immediately near bakrupcy if the publisher pulls the plug. It will be interesting to see if they can get another investor and what that would mean to DS3. I agree with Gorath that rleasing the current "almost complete" items in the pipeline is likely to happen. There won't be much hard assets, so getting money via these releases is in the best interest of creditors.
 
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CraigCWB said:
But as others have said, 100 employees seems like a lot of bloat for a company that has only released a few major titles in the last decade or so.
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As far as i understood it, hey are constantl developing new titles - not just RPGs - and for other pltforms, too.

Here is the list of all ? of their games : http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon_Labs

Their newest development is the old school turn-based strategy game called "Future Wars". They developed it together with Headup.
 
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PERKELE!

How did I managed to miss this. But at least there is a slight hope for the River of Time still. It was definately the RPG game I've waiting for a quite some time.

And imo 3-4 games per year is a LOT, even though there is 100 workers, if you compare to Crytek for example that does one game every 3 years or so. :)
 
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It has been shown time and time again, to make huge RPG's with some freedom of exploration ( and especially if they are party based ) are simply not profitable..... even if they sell decently they just cost too much to make.....
 
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Damn, I hope we'll be able to play River of Time in english but maybe that's canned now? Well at this point I'd be happy to play it with english subtitles.

A sad day for CRPG's
 
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Indeed a very sad day. Drakensang was very solid and a lot of fun, and the sequel a real improvement. Both games were labors of love. To me it seemed that the series was off to a great start.
 
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That's really sad - while The River of Time is no perfect Game it was at least a Step in the right direction. I had hope for the following titles (well, at least until I heard that DraSa 3 was also developed for consoles).
 
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Avantenor said:
He also mentioned it was not dtp who pulled the plug.
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Actually he didn't say that. There are other ways to interpret what he said. ;)
 
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Sadly Gorath is right in his/this sentence.
 
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It has more or less been confirmed that it was indeed dtp who backed out.

Their manager Markus Windelen says here http://www.pcgames.de/Drakensang-Am...venz-Deutschland-alleine-reicht-nicht-748021/ that

Die bisherigen Titel wurden zwar auf dem deutschen Markt sehr gut angenommen, das allein reicht aber nicht, um ein millionenschweres Entwicklungsbudget wieder einzuspielen. Wir vermarkten Drakensang auch international – außerhalb Deutschlands hat es die Reihe allerdings deutlich schwerer, da das Rollenspielsystem DSA weniger bekannt ist, die Vorlieben der Spieler anders sind und der internationale PC-Markt generell schwierig ist.
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the Drakensang games [sold] very good on the German market, but this isn't sufficient - he says to get a budget consisting of millions of Euros back.

He also says there that Drakensang is being martketed internationally, but he says that TDE is much more less known outside of Germany, the gamers' preferences are different, and the international PC market is more difficult in general.


I can only guess what he means with "gamers' preferences". D&G ? Plus Action, maybe ?
 
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International versions for both game and add-on are also confirmed.
 
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Alrik Fassbauer said:
I can only guess what he means with "gamers' preferences". D&G ? Plus Action, maybe ?
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Here's a free business lesson for him.

Do English marketing. Get an international release date. Do more marketing.

Seriously, the had a ludicrously out of date and pathetic English website first time round and we waited ages. This time around, we have even less information. Why on earth would anyone in the international market be interested in a game, when they have no interest in us?
 
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GothicGothicness said:
It has been shown time and time again, to make huge RPG's with some freedom of exploration ( and especially if they are party based ) are simply not profitable….. even if they sell decently they just cost too much to make…..
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Like those infinity engine games that still sell more than most new RPG games do yearly? Or Final Fantasy series? Good games sell, if marketing has done properly. And now that the have the engine ready and polished as well as lot of areas and models to be re-used , the sequels and prequels shouldn't really need enormous budget. And I think they still did pretty awesome job with DSA1 with the small budget anyways!

Here's a free business lesson for him.

Do English marketing. Get an international release date. Do more marketing.

Seriously, the had a ludicrously out of date and pathetic English website first time round and we waited ages. This time around, we have even less information. Why on earth would anyone in the international market be interested in a game, when they have no interest in us?
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Couldn't agree more. I didn't heard a peep from it until I noticed the game on some torrent release page. I downloaded, tried out and buyed it immeaditely. I bet that my fixpack mod has done more marketing than dtp has ever done for the game.

And about TDE ruleset, instead of trying to hide the fact that the game is based on The Dark Eye pen and paper ruleset, they should do the opposite and praise: "Uses the famous The Dark Eye P&P ruleset." etc. Most of the reviews have acclaimed the rules. And I don't really believe that the gamers' preferences are that different. The Witcher sold like anything, even though it is very european, dark and gritty.

But I cannot blame the developers, they have done their part thoroughly with the limited budget and the game was basically 100% bugfree. :)

Drakensang_Cover_Spec.jpg

And one of the problems in marketing is the cover too, IMO. This looks like some cheap indie game to me. Instead they should have used this or this, but at least the prequel has a much better cover.
 
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Like those infinity engine games that still sell more than most new RPG games do yearly? Or Final Fantasy series? Good games sell, if marketing has done properly. And now that the have the engine ready and polished as well as lot of areas and models to be re-used , the sequels and prequels shouldn't really need enormous budget. And I think they still did pretty awesome job with DSA1 with the small budget anyways!
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Final Fantasy has to be considered a linear game….. it certainly doesn't put you in a world where you are free to do things in the order you please etc.

Infinity Engine games are composed of lose parts which you can explore and not one world, and besides they are in 2d which you cannot count as modern. On top of that Black Isle and Interplay etc went bankrupt.
 
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