Japanese veteran developer, Neverland, is filing for bankruptcy. This is despite its most recent game, Rune Factory 4, receiving favourable reviews and being one of the company’s fastest-selling games ever with 150,000 units to date.
In a statement, the company cited changes in the business environment as a key issue behind its losses and bankruptcy. It was of course not more specific than this, but let’s just throw this out there again; game developers are just not making enough money from their work any more.
The flight to the bottom in terms of pricing, as well as a perceived lack of value in games amongst the games community means that margins are being squeezed stifling thin, and there are very few developers and publishers that are genuinely running healthy businesses right now.
Neverland is a sobering reminder that perhaps, just perhaps, these things like DLC and microtransactions are not a bad thing. After all. I would have rather had Neverland around and spent $10 more on a DLC costume pack then Neverland gone and now the future of the entire Rune Factory franchise is under a question mark.
