Photek wrote:This is a shock decision, the Lionhead Twitter mentions a talk and showing game at conference next week.
I'm genuinely sad to hear about the closure of Lionhead. Just a couple of days ago I received an email from them inviting me to play Fable Legends. I love the quintessential Englishness of the Fable world and enjoyed the original and second game. Even the flawed third game had its merits.
But the Fable Legends development has been very problematic. The original reveal trailer in 2013 said nothing about it being a MOBA kind of game. Then we learnt about the multiplayer element, then that it was multiplayer only. Also there was BS press day where certain select press were invited, they signed their contracts, and some came out doing somersaults with happiness telling us the good news that it would be a freemium F2P game! Kotaku UK proclaimed
Fable Legends is Indeed Free-to-Play – And it's Not a Bad Thing. Remember this sales pitch?
Kotaku UK's Keza McDonald wrote:"Free-to-play actually seems less risky to me than asking people to pay £45 for a multiplayer-focused take on a series that's got such strong single-player memories attached to it. The beta is likely to expand its player population in the coming months. If you're curious, you can sign up here.
But the change in direction indicated a major shift from management level. Bear in mind this was now almost a year into the Phil Spencer era. But it seems not everybody was happy about the F2P online focus.
Ex-Lionhead ex-Hello Games producer, Dan Gray, is not happy and has slammed Microsoft. He tweeted
"Really sad to hear the news about Lionhead. Microsoft really are the destroyer of first party studios. Seven years ago was a different story." I would like to hear the story behind today's news.