Ascendant Studios News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios has reportedly furloughed the majority of its staff.

It continues to be a difficult time at Ascendant Studios, the developers behind last year’s magical shooter flop Immortals of Aveum, as it’s claimed that the studio have now furloughed most of their staff - only a matter of months after almost half of their employees were laid off.

Ascendant Studios has reportedly been hit with another major blow. The studio, which released its debut title Immortals of Aveum last year, seems to have furloughed the “majority” of its staff, which means they have been placed on indefinite leave without pay, but continue to be employed by the company on paper.

The demise of the "AA" tier of video games is not a new topic of discussion; it's something that has been pointed out and/or lamented for well over a decade at this point, with the Xbox 360 era often pointed to as being both the swansong and the beginning of the steep decline for lower budget, more quickly developed, and usually more rapidly discounted AA titles.

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Ascendant Studios, who made last year’s Immortals of Aveum, seem to be in a dire state.

Ascendant Studios, the developer behind last year's EA-published magic shooter Immortals of Aveum, has reportedly furloughed the majority of its staff.

Immortals of Aveum may not have enjoyed the level of critical and commercial success that Ascendant Studios would have been hoping for – especially given its significant development budget – but the developer is continuing to update the game with new features. Ascendant Studio has announced (via Digital Foundry) that with upcoming updates, a couple more notable new features will be coming to the game’s PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions.

Ascendant Studios' Immortals of Aveum is currently enjoying a new lease of life as a 'free' game on PlayStation Plus — and two major upgrades are coming soon. The first — patch 1.0.6.3 — adds support for high dynamic range and should be rolling out to all console versions of the game today. Perhaps more exciting is the upcoming 1.0.6.4, which brings AMD's FSR 3 frame generation to consoles for the first time, increasing frame-rate via inserted, interpolated frames.

Immortals of Aveum saw a very rough debut last summer, with the first-person magic-shooter from new studio Ascendant and EA reportedly suffering poor sales and mixed reviews - resulting in almost half of its developers being laid off mere weeks after its launch. Despite being a reported $125 million flop that “no-one bought”, its director believes that it could still go on to find an audience yet.

Immortals of Aveum is a game which will continue to be discovered by players for «years and years» like Dead Space, according to its director.

In Europe, Immortals of Aveum was the 469th best-selling game of 2023.

Immortals of Aveum is being sold in UK supermarket Asda for £1.

Magical first-person shooter Immortals Of Aveum launched last August and by the following month half its development team had been laid off due to poor sales.

A developer who worked on Immortals of Aveum has said it was “a truly awful idea” to release a game of its type, with such a large budget attached to it.

Immortals of Aveum was a major AAA from EA that came and went. Some gamers may have literally not known that the game came out, after it generated hype from the trailer, since it barely gets talked about today. Now, some of the game’s former developers get candid about what happened.

As game development budgets continue to balloon to an unsustainable degree, we’re beginning to see an increasing number of prominent examples of titles that have failed to make a satisfactory return on their heavy investments. 2023’s Immortals of Aveum is one such game. Indie team Ascendant Studios’ single player first-person shooter was billed as a full-fledged AAA experience, but in spite of its sheen and production value, the game failed to meet commercial expectations, leading to nearly half of the studio’s workforce being laid off.

The CEO of Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios has said releasing the game during such a busy window «100 percent» contributed to its poor sales figures.

With its promise of a cinematic, single player magic FPS experience, Immortals of Aveum generated a fair bit of buzz in the lead-up to its release earlier this year, though the game failed to perform the way developer Ascendant Studios would have hoped it would. In addition to mixed reception from critics, it also failed to sell well, leading to the studio laying off nearly half of its staff.

Immortals Of Aveum never looked like it was going to be successful, and it wasn't. I root for it, however. In an industry where big budget blockbusters are most often sequels, or boringly safe, Aveum feels comparatively bold just by being a self-evidentaly daft first-person mashup of Call Of Duty and Doctor Strange magic powers.

Developer Ascendant Studios has released a major update for its magic-based first-person shooter Immortals of Aveum. The update, dubbed the Echollector update, brings with it a host of changes and new features to the game. Celebrating the update is a new trailer that you can check out below.

Ascendant Studios’ Immortals of Aveum will receive a new content update on November 16th. The Echollector Update arrives alongside a free trial on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, along with a demo on Steam. It adds a new endgame objective where Jak must venture to new areas courtesy of corrupted Shatterfanes.

Developer Ascendant Studios—which recently released Immortals of Aveum—has announced that it is laying off around 45 percent of its team. Studio CEO Bret Robbins made the announcement over social media platform X, calling it a difficult but necessary decision.

About two weeks before the release of Immortals of Aveum, EA's new first-person spell-shooter action title, Baldur's Gate III released to rapturous acclaim. Larian Studios' Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG - with its deeply rewarding quests, robust gameplay systems, and its evocative characters and storylines - became a global phenomenon, racking up over 800,000 concurrent players on steam. A strong contender for Game of the Year, Baldur's Gate III offers meaningful choices, compelling narratives, and hundreds of hours of immersive experience in the Forgotten Realms.

Ascendant Studios has released its second update for Immortals of Aveum, bringing some much-needed fixes. Future updates are coming to add more options and features requested by players. For now, PC players can look forward to increased range for mouse sensitivity to set it lower. Console players who found the brightness too dark or bright should also see this fixed.

Ascendant Studios and EA’s Immortals of Aveum is out now, and reviews for the single player magic shooter have been lukewarm at best. And as it turns out, impressions on the game’s technical performance aren’t exactly glowingly positive either.

Publisher EA and developer Ascendant Studios have announced that first-person magic-based sh ooter Immortals of Aveum is out now on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Leading up to its launch, the game had gotten a launch trailer released earlier this week.

With Immortals of Aveum’s launch right around the corner, plenty of details have recently become available on what we can expect from the single player magic shooter’s technical aspects, with its demanding PC requirements having been revealed, and developer Ascendant Studios also having confirmed that it will run at 60 FPS on consoles.

Ascendant Studios’ single player fantasy FPS Immortals of Aveum has turned a fair few heads since its announcement earlier this year, and with the game not far away from release now, publisher EA is continuing to build up the hype with a new trailer to celebrate its imminent launch. Check it out below.

Ascendant Studios recently announced that its upcoming single player first person magic shooter Immortals of Aveum had gone gold, and with the game now just a few days away from release, the developer has also detailed the system requirements for its PC version across four settings.

With Immortals of Aveum mere days away from launch, developer Ascendant Studios has revealed a host of new technical details on the magic FPS. Its PC requirements have been revealed in full, with the required specs being quite demanding across all four setups, which range from 1080p/60 FPS to 4K/120 FPS. But what can players expect from the game’s console versions?

Immortals of Aveum has gone gold, and pre-loads are available for Xbox Series X/S and PC players (with PS5 going live on the 19th). In the meantime, a new video is available going more in-depth with the Talent Tree. Along with 25 Spells, protagonist Jak can also harness more than 80 Talents.

Ascendant Studios’ Immortals of Aveum has already gone gold before its release next week, and there’s good news for those with slower connections. The pre-load is available on PC via Steam, Epic Games Store and the EA App, and for Xbox Series X/S players.

Ascendant Studios’ fantasy first-person shooter Immortals of Aveum has gone gold. The studio released a new trailer celebrating the fact while discussing their development journey. Check it out below.

Ascendant Studios’ Immortals of Aveum received much information at San Diego Comic-Con. The developer revealed a new cinematic, which sees Jak and General Kirkan conflicted over the Binding Stone, a powerful artifact. It also confirmed that Michael Kirkbride of The Elder Scrolls fame is involved with the world-building and narrative.

Ascendant Studios unveiled a new cinematic for Immortals of Aveum before its San Diego Comic-Con panel, showcasing a tense confrontation between protagonist Jak and General Kirkan. However, the studio also revealed that Michael Kirkbride, known for writing the lore of The Elder Scrolls series (including Morrowind andOblivion), is involved in the narrative.

Before its panel for San Diego Comic-Con, Ascendant Studios released a new trailer for Immortals of Aveum. It showcases an in-game cinematic where Jak, General Kirkan and Zendara have a meeting. To be more accurate, Jak is admonished for bringing back the Binding Stone instead of destroying it. Check it out below.

Immortals of Aveum blends first-person shooter and magic, and all of it is set in a new world with its own lore. Ahead of EA and Ascendant Studios’ presentation at San Diego Comic-Con, there’s a new devblog on writing the game’s lore and narrative roots.