Volition bids farewell after 30 years

01.09.2023 - 22:31 / gamedeveloper.com / Red Faction

Yesterday, August 31, saw the end of Volition, and the studio bid farewell with one final post on Twitter. In its message, the 30-year-old developer looked back on its existence, saying it's "been around long enough that some folks forget what we made, but they certainly know our games."

Volition's owner Embracer chose to close the Saints Row developer down as part of a "restructuring program" enacted earlier in the year. It and Campfire Cabal from early August were casualties of Embracer's scuttled $2 billion deal (reportedly with Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games), and followed by further ongoing layoffs inside the parent company.

"There are only a handful of studios in the industry that have been around for 30 years, and we took a lot of pride at Volition being one of them," the statement continued. "Thank you so much to every Volitionite who has ever worked here. You are all what made this the magical place it was to work at, and we can never say enough about how much you've meant to us over these 30 years."

It also took the time to highlight its audience, "even those times when you wish we had (or hadn't!) gone a certain way with a Saints Row, Red Faction, or Descent [game]."

Throughout its history, Volition became embroiled in the politics of whichever company owned it at the time. Following THQ's bankruptcy in 2012, the company was sold off to Koch Media's Deep Silver division, and 2013's Saints Row IV became the studio's first project under Deep Silver. 

Because the open-world crime franchise was such a hot ticket for THQ, and since Deep Silver gained control of Red Faction, Volition's remaining tenure would be devoted to Saints Row. Its first (and only) attempt at a non-Saints game was Insane, a horror project made in collaboration with Guillermo del Toro that was canceled in 2012.

Following the release (and mixed response) of 2022's Saints Row reboot, Volition was transferred from Deep Silver to Gearbox. At the time of its launch, Embracer acknowledged the reboot didn't meet full sales expectations, even as it "performed in line with management expectations in the quarter."

A letter to our community. pic.twitter.com/vtFM7szLbN