After the disappointing sales of the Saints Row Remake, it appears that Volition is no more as Embracer Group has shut it down. Yeap, who would have thought that after such a huge commercial flop, the studio behind it would be shut down?
Saints Row Remake was a game that nobody wanted. Instead of building on what Volition has created with the previous Saints Row games, the team decided to remake the franchise for modern audiences. Not only that but the game released with numerous bugs and performance issues. In fact, Saints Row was one of the worst-optimized PC games of 2022.
In short, the writing was on the wall. Volition tried to polish the game with a huge update in May 2023. However, that patch wasn’t enough to win back the Saints Row fanbase. Well, I guess that’s what you get when you abandon everything that made your franchise stand out from all the other GTA clones.
Truth be told, this isn’t Volition’s first and only flop. Remember Agents of Mayhem? Now that was the first game that put the studio in trouble.
So there you have it, Volition is no more. And while I loved Red Faction and the older Saints Row games, I’m not sure whether a lot of those developers were still present in the studio. It’s sad that a game studio closes but again, this Volition did not feel like the old Volition most of us fell in love with. And that says a lot.
Let’s now hope that other developers won’t fall in this trap of completely changing already established franchises for modern audiences!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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