Volition would also produce Red Faction: Armageddon which was a decent game but ended up lacking in sales which led to the franchise being put on hold for the foreseeable future. With two successes under its belt, Volition circled back to Red Faction with Red Faction: Guerrilla which was loved by fans and critics alike. The sequel featured a better open world with hilarious writing, and fans absolutely loved it. Saints Row 2 was released in 2008, and it took the franchise to new heights.
Now that Saints Row turned out to be a successful venture, the developer started work on sequels in an effort to turn the IP into a household name. The game was an instant hit and in addition to being critically well-received – the game also made impressive sales for a new IP with over 2 million copies sold in its lifetime. Volition expanded the team by dozens during this game’s production, and Saints Row was finally released for Xbox 360 in 2006. The team planned to create a game that would have elements of a first-person shooter along with the ability to build gangs, and that idea would soon morph into something bigger – an open-world game that would expand on the concepts of contemporaries like Grand Theft Auto while infusing its own ideas into the mix. Volition would go on to work on a franchise that would go on to define the developer for the foreseeable future. But that success was mostly short-lived as its sequel, Red Faction 2 didn’t achieve expected sales – which led to both the IPs being put on hold. Given the popularity of open world games where players can do whatever they want and create mayhem, Volition would go on to create a new IP in the form of Red Faction, and this mayhem-focused action-adventure game released in 2001 proved to a turning point for Volition. The studio has left a long legacy of great hits and went through some troubled times during its long lifespan, so let’s take a look at how the studio rose to greatness and eventually shut its door. We have seen many promising studios fall due to such unfortunate scenarios, and the recent closure of developer Volition is the latest in the line of many such cases. And if that risk doesn’t end up paying off, publishers and investors usually resort to strict measures which could range from canceling future projects to downsizing employees to even outright closing the studio itself.
As the cost of development continues to rise with each new console generation, each project comes with a massive amount of risk for the stakeholders. The games industry can be a truly turbulent place, and there’s no telling what may become of a game development studio in a few years’ time.
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