It has been confirmed that Neople, a subsidiary of Nexon, has reassigned a large portion of the development team for its AAA action-adventure game “The First Berserker: Khazan,”, which launched ambitiously in March last year but underperformed commercially.
According to the gaming industry on the 8th, Neople held an internal briefing this afternoon and informed employees of the decision.
“Khazan” launched globally in March last year and at one point reached nearly 30,000 concurrent players on PC, but sales later declined and ultimately fell below market expectations.
With this measure, a significant number of the roughly 100 developers on the Khazan team have been reassigned internally to a transition unit called the “R Team.”
While Neople stated that this does not mean the Khazan development team has been dissolved, DLC releases and potential ports to other platforms that were initially expected are now effectively uncertain.
A Nexon official stated, “As the roadmap of the large-scale Khazan project has entered its final stages, we decided to separate personnel into those who will focus on completing the remaining tasks and those who will be reassigned to other projects that require concentrated organizational and human resources.”
The official added, “We plan to actively support the reassignment of personnel who gained expertise in completing a global AAA title through the Khazan project, so they can apply their experience and capabilities to other projects.”
Nooooooo, whyyy? :( The game is so good and it did so well on paper. What’s with all these constant studio closures after such little time to prove themselves? Just another symptom of a sick game development industry, I guess.
Damn, I wasn’t aware it underperformed. I’ve heard only positives about it!
Same, but to be fair the Soulslike market is turbo oversaturated so I assume it’s tough out there. And I think Khazan possibly could be a weird edge case where it’s halfway between CAG and Soulslike and sort of fell short of pulling in either fanbase completely? Just spitballing here.
it’s halfway between CAG and Soulslike
Yup that is kinda scary.
On the one hand it intrigues me, but I’ve also heard it’s brutally difficult so that bit is scaring me off.
I watched some gameplay when it dropped, didn’t care about spoilers much so I saw some of the big fights and they looked severely hard. So we are together in this one, mate. :P
I need a break from ER invasions and miss feeling lost in an unknown place.
What do you like about this one? And off the cuff what should my goal be when I play it?
Haven’t played the whole game, but did play the demo when it came out. It’s a good-looking Soulslike with tight controls and a few tweaks to the normal formula. Brutally hard, and a lot of that is because it’s very parry-heavy, with many different kinds of parry. Miss a dodge or get your timing wrong, you’ll be eating shit and restarting again. Surprisingly long demo, did enjoy it.
Do have it wishlisted, but it’s always been at quite a hefty price and haven’t dipped in, yet. Would have been a yes from me at thirty quid and I’d have considered it at forty, but it seems to sit at fifty, and there’s very few games I’d pay that amount for.
Demo came out in the same week as the AI Limit demo, which is a much more traditional Soulsy, and which I bought and had a good time with. There’s a busy market for Souls games, for sure.
Those are pretty much the two main factors brought up in this conversation. It’s a AA soulslike at best, but it launched at a AAA price and didn’t see any price cuts, in addition to releasing at the same time as AI Limit and other bigger releases. The cell-shader graphics also might have been a turn-off for some who are not into this anime-y look
I quite liked the graphics, but yeah. Lies of P started at the same price and saw discounts more quickly, and you can currently buy it and its DLC for the same price as Khazan. That’s probably the best soulslike of recent years, rave reviews across the board, and it did sell millions for a small, unknown team. You just have to measure up to that to do the same.
Exactly. The games are very different, so it’s hard to compare them, but when it comes to value for the price, LoP wins by a long shot
Price’s been a huge factor for me. It was recently discounted at still like 40usd and I thought about getting it but ultimately didn’t. :(
By their anniversary post it looks lile they are at least working on a dlc, hopefully it helps revive interest in the game.
Yea, it’s hard to justify. Last year, I bought the game full price actually after I’ve played the demo and liked it so much, it literally kept thinking about buying the game for like a full week before committing. I’m very glad I did, but it’s a tough sell for sure