Iron Man Game Could Have Destroyed Just Cause Devs
The co-founder of Avalanche revealed how the studio's cooperation with Disney and Marvel worked out. The policies of these companies may have led the developer to trouble.
Sometimes it is only years later that we learn about certain facts, rumors or controversies from the world of digital entertainment. Christofer Sundberg - co-founder and former creative director of Avalanche - decided to reveal one such tidbit. In an interview with MinnMaxx channel Sundberg described an interesting project that ultimately never saw the light of day.
Pressure from Marvel and Disney
According to the co-founder of Avalanche, the project focused on Iron Man was canceled around 2012. The culprits behind the whole incident were Disney and Marvel - the companies reportedly wanted to speed up the game's development process at the expense of Avalanche's stability. Sundberg confessed:
"It was that by speeding up development and increasing the budget, we would have had to hire an additional 70 or 80 people to whom I would then have had to provide work. But the time to develop the game was cut so much that it was impossible. If we had agreed to this, it would have completely destroyed the studio."
In the end, the former head of Avalanche does not regret his decision. In the interview, he also provided a more meticulous explanation of the problem the studio might have faced:
"At the end of the work, when the team gets smaller, you have to find a new project, and with that one year of development time cut from the original plan, it would have meant that I would have had one year less to set a new goal for a larger team, which would have been impossible. Hiring all those developers would have been a complete nightmare, so this was for the best," Sundberg explained
In the end, it worked out for the best
Currently there are more than 500 employees in all Avalanche divisions. This can be compared to current staffing levels at CD Projekt RED (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk) or Insomniac Games (authors of Marvel's Spider-Man). However, we do not have detailed data on the number of people employed by Avalanche in 2010-2012.
At the same time, it is worth mentioning, that in 2008-2010 the studio faced huge financial problems. The cancellation of as many as three of its projects in a short period of time led to financial losses of $35 million, which contributed to the dismissal of almost a hundred employees. After such experiences, it's no wonder Sundberg was afraid of taking responsibility for a project about Iron Man.
Today, Avalanche boasts an extensive portfolio. In 2018 the studio released decently received Just Cause 4, and barely a year later the highly acclaimed shooter RAGE 2. Currently, the developer is working on a new IP - Second Extinction, which is expected to debut later this year on PC and Xbox consoles.
