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Defiant Development announced that it is ‘ceasing development’ of video games in a Facebook post yesterday. Defiant is best-known for its synergistic, roguelike, deck-building, role-playing Hand of Fate, which released on PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One in 2014. The sequel, Hand of Fate 2, came out three years later, in 2017.
The studio explained that the uniqueness of its games, though well-loved by fans and critics, generated significant risks: ‘We set out without knowing where the journey will take us, and we do so knowing that the unknown is not always safe.’
The landscape of game development has shifted in scope and scale during the almost decade that Defiant has been on the scene, and the post states that the studio did not react swiftly enough to these changes. In spite of the loss of future games, Defiant emphasised that ‘people are always more important – to the people of Defiant, staff, friends, families, and partners, thank you.’ The studio will continue in ‘caretaker mode’ for the two Hand of Fate games, while the team members search for new opportunities elsewhere.
Just before signing off, a short teaser of the next game the studio had in production was shared in the post, titled The World in my Attic. It would have been a Q1 2020 release, and carries the torch of Defiant’s marriage of tabletop format and structure, with a video game aesthetic and platform. Take a look at the project below.
