Piranha Bytes has shut down, Bjorn Pankratz founds new studio

[REhorror]

>Piranha Bytes closes down
>Larian manages to become the retard king of RPG development
>Jews are genociding Palestinians while the world watches in silence
It's not so much that this is the worst timeline, it's that we're descending into Hell.

It is always darkess before the dawn.

 

[Hellion]

 

[BruceVC]

GameStar updated the article and claimed that their sources confirm it's over for PB.

https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/piranha-bytes-gothic-elex-schliessung,3406996.html

But again this is not official, your link starts off with "Official confirmation is still pending, but our sources suggest that Piranha Bytes will no longer exist in the future. At least not like before"

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I like PB but this was only a matter of time. In fact, I'm surprised they made it this far, I guess the German taxpayer is to credit for it. They basically had one job, that was to replicate the Gothic formula while refining it, and they kept fumbling it. Not for lack of talent, either. It's like they didn't know why people bought their games. They kept chasing trends, trying to capture some imaginary mass consumer, while keeping very niche systems that repel casual gamers, because that's their trademark style. They couldn't make another masterpiece(Elex so very subtly hints at it) and they couldn't dumb it down properly for the masses. They stayed in a comfortable middle. How do you piss off your fans while getting review bombed by journos? That's Piranha Bytes. Now they ran out of lives.

 

[Tavar]

It's not a big surprise, but it's still sad to see them go. Gothic 2 is one of my all-time favourite games, but PB has never reached that level of quality again. Nevertheless, I think that their closure is more related to Embracer than to the studio itself. They would probably still be around if they had decided to remain independent or if they had sold to a company like Microsoft.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

btw. the whole embracer situation shows very well how my recent thread about cRPG death was a result of business failure

 

[Ravielsk]

There are rumors doing the rounds today about ELEX 3 being cancelled and PB on the verge of shutting down.

It would not shock me in the least. PB has not made a actually overall "good" game since Risen 1. Everything after that game was a bundle of compromises that never felt justified. Risen 2 is the pirate part of the Night of the Raven but stupidly stretched out way past its welcome, Risen 3 felt like a badly written Risen 1 fanfic and Elex was a grindy mess with little to no payoff. I have not touched Elex 2 despite having bought it through humble bundle.

If I was their publisher I would be thinking about shutting them down regardless of profitability because at this point the studio is obviously incapable of measuring up to its own legacy(aka they cannot match either of the Gothic games) and hype. Shutting them down and moving the better parts of the personnel to a new studio without all the baggage is far quicker and easier than trying to rehabilitate a obviously washed up old one.

 

[El Presidente]

I still have no clue about the ELEX games since literally every single post ever written about it on the Codex was either drowned in olympic amounts of irony or by people who have never played it - or both.

 

[scytheavatar]

btw. the whole embracer situation shows very well how my recent thread about cRPG death was a result of business failure

The fact that the PB team gives a shit about keeping the Elex IP shows why they absolutely deserve to be shut down. Like why are they so obsessed with making an Elex 3 when the last game was a bomb?

It's not a big surprise, but it's still sad to see them go. Gothic 2 is one of my all-time favourite games, but PB has never reached that level of quality again. Nevertheless, I think that their closure is more related to Embracer than to the studio itself. They would probably still be around if they had decided to remain independent or if they had sold to a company like Microsoft.

Still be around to lose money? People like you make me convince it's only a matter of time before Microsoft exits the gaming industry, when everyone seems to think they are some kind of charity organization for game devs.

 

[Zlaja]

Fans of Piranha Bytes gathered in protest over the Embracer's decision to shut the studio down:

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I missed that this forum already had an ongoing thread about the rumor (and they are basically confirming it in the most recent posts):

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...s-to-be-shut-down-by-thq-nordic.149371/page-3

What surprises me in hindsight is how PB never managed to capitalize on their initial mild successes.
You have studios like CDPR or Larian (or to a lesser extent Spider, Deck 13, InXile and so on) that as soon as "nailed" one decent hit started to ramp up their investment, raise production value, polish their style, etc...

And then you have PB who tried (and mostly failed) to replicate their most beloved hit for 20 years and kept falling more and more behind the curve as the industry advanced.

 

[Humanophage]

I still have no clue about the ELEX games since literally every single post ever written about it on the Codex was either drowned in olympic amounts of irony or by people who have never played it - or both.

ELEX 1 is very good. Don't know why people hate on it, the usual reasons given seem retarded. Great dreamy exploration made even better by the rocket jump, lots of verticality, no level-based area division which plagues almost all RPGs, loot-based incentives to explore, no hand-holding, etc. The plot is neutral, but Gothic isn't known for great plots and dialogues, this aspect was much more about the general atmosphere and reactivity rather than some clever characters and inventive factions (it's usually a religious faction, a chaotic faction, and a lawful faction).

 

[scytheavatar]

They basically had one job, that was to replicate the Gothic formula while refining it, and they kept fumbling it.

They already tried to do it with Risen. A game which many people liked but let's face it was way more janky than Gothic 2. The talent simply isn't there in PB to "refine" the Gothic formula, nor did they have the budget. The sad reality is that anything they produce was going to just be a worse version of Gothic 2, Gothic 2 was too much lightning in a bottle to be replicated.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I still have no clue about the ELEX games since literally every single post ever written about it on the Codex was either drowned in olympic amounts of irony or by people who have never played it - or both.

https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10798

 

[gabel]

I still have no clue about the ELEX games since literally every single post ever written about it on the Codex was either drowned in olympic amounts of irony or by people who have never played it - or both.

https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10798

Well, turns out all your shilling didn't save them. :/

 

[StrongBelwas]

You can't be Piranha Bytes and try going mainstream without losing their essence, that's just how you get Risen.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

You can't be Piranha Bytes and try going mainstream without losing their essence, that's just how you get Risen.

Risen was the closest thing they got to nailing a throwback to Gothic 2, though.
They got progressively worse with every following game.

ELEX 2 in particular was an abominable culimnation of "failing to streamline" while also failing to raise their production value.

But even putting PB's missteps aside, I fundamentally disagree with your premise. There's nothing about Gothic 1 or 2 that would be inherently incompatible with a game that kept all the core design and ramped up the production value.

 

[Ravielsk]

You can't be Piranha Bytes and try going mainstream without losing their essence, that's just how you get Risen.

No idea where this is coming from. Gothic and Risen 1 were both very mainstream oriented games. Compared to even casual RPGs or their time like diablo clones like Sacred or other action rpgs like Divinity II: Ego Draconis, Gothic and Risen were fairly casual with a small pool of skills and stats to manage and a selection builds that essentially spelled out the stat progression right in their name.

The difference was that unlike modern streamlines slop Gothic and Risen 1 did not just removed or simplify RPG elements for the sake or getting rid of a difficulty bump but instead turned them into more immersive versions of themselves. Instead of numbers defining your proficiency you had the players own skill level so theoretically you had a character capable of literary everything but a player competent only in some things. Which logically leads to everyone having a slightly different yet wholly immersive experience as the difference do not stem from a random dice roll but from the players themselves.

They were lightweight "immersive sims"(I hate that word) that were somewhat clunky to sync up the player character's growth with the player itself.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I never understood why they didn't return to smaller scale games with constant high quality, something of the size of Gothic 1 or between Gothic 1 and 2 would have been perfect. Gothic 3 was already way too large for them, its a shame that they didn't learn their lesson for good back then. Aber besser ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende. I hope they get to rest in peace, Gothic 1 and 2 are among the best the rpg genre has to offer and while their later titles were all worse, they never turned into an abomination like Bioware.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

They basically had one job, that was to replicate the Gothic formula while refining it, and they kept fumbling it.

They already tried to do it with Risen. A game which many people liked but let's face it was way more janky than Gothic 2. The talent simply isn't there in PB to "refine" the Gothic formula, nor did they have the budget. The sad reality is that anything they produce was going to just be a worse version of Gothic 2, Gothic 2 was too much lightning in a bottle to be replicated.

Risen was a return to form, they've could've used that as a base to build upon. I didn't play Elex 2, but I read a lot about it. It seems to have suffered the same PB curse, where instead of improving on the game's flaws they destroyed what was good. Normally you wouldn't survive as a company being this clueless. As for talent, I think Elex had the same magic as the old games. Visual design and exploration are of extremely high quality. It's on the more mundane things that PB fumbles, not on these more intangible elements. If you've been working at making the same game for over 20 years, you should have a working combat system that works flawlessly. This is a mystery because they don't seem to lack the brains for technical tasks, either. They've always been years ahead of Bethesda on technical terms. I remember Elex ran perfectly on my old computer. It's like they're very thoughtful in some matters, but not at all in others. Is that a German thing, perhaps?

 

[Fedora Master]

It's okay, they achieved their magnum opus with Night of the Raven

 

[Robber Baron]

Sad but was anyone really looking forward to Elex 3

 

[deuxhero]

Can they give us the Gothic engine source code first? They confirmed they still have it, and that it was all inhouse (no middleware)

 

[Justicar]

They havent made a good gayme since Risen 1 you retarted subhumans.

GOOD RIDDANCE.

 

[Whisper]

Elex was below average game.