Avalanche Studios Group, a client of Sweet Baby Inc., announced it is laying off nearly 10% of its staff and shutting down its locations in New York and Montreal.
A screenshot from Contraband (TBD), Avalanche Studios
The company posted a statement to its website that reads, “Since its inception over two decades ago, Avalanche Studios Group has grown to encompass five locations worldwide: Stockholm, New York, Malmö, Liverpool, and Montreal. Today, we regretfully announce the closure of two of those locations: New York and Montreal. This means we’ll be parting ways with around 50 valued friends and colleagues, which represents roughly 9 percent of Avalanchers worldwide.”
The statement continued, “This is an exceptionally difficult decision, but we believe it’s necessary to ensure a stable and sustainable future for the company. Our focus is now on supporting all Avalanchers through this challenging time. We’re grateful for the invaluable contributions of those leaving and remain committed to creating incredible gaming experiences for our players.”
Statement from Avalanche Studios Group
Sweet Baby Inc. lists Avalanche Studios Group as one of its clients on its website.
Screenshot of Sweet Baby Inc.’s clients
The company also listed Avalanche Studios’ upcoming game Contraband as one of the projects it worked on. Specifically the company revealed it did “sensitivity reading, character bios, and scriptwriting” for the game.
A list of games Sweet Baby Inc. worked on that includes Contraband
Avalanche Studios is the latest in a growing list of companies that are shutting down, seeing poor sales, or are unable to have their games break even after working with Sweet Baby Inc.
In August 2023, Sweet Baby Inc, announced that Mimimi Games was shutting down following the release of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. The company posted on LinkedIn, “We are saddened to learn that Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is Mimimi’s last game. We’re incredibly proud to have helped bring this final voyage to shore by collaborating on the game’s protagonist, Afia, with Matthias Kraut, Moritz Wagner, and the rest of the crew at Mimimi Games GmbH. Our collaboration helped make the world of the Cursed Caribbean feel more inclusive and representative. Very happy to see that players have resonated the game, as evidenced by its incredible reception.”
“The Mimimi team is amazing and deserves to land on their feet. We would be happy to connect folks in our network who are looking for talented developers with the studio – send us a DM if you are interested,” Sweet Baby Inc. concluded.
Sweet Baby Inc. on LinkedIn
Mimimi Games and its founders Dominik Abé and Johannes Roth announced the company was shutting down at the end of August 2023 writing in a blog post, “It is with a heavy heart that today we have to share the news that Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew will be Mimimi’s final game.”
The duo continued, “As we look back at our 15-year journey crafting games (and crying about it), we feel grateful for the incredible love and support we received from all of you. We cherished every game we made and feel proud of what we were able to accomplish as a studio.”
“At the same time, dedicating the past decade and a half of our lives working on increasingly ambitious games took a heavy personal toll on us and our families. After the release of Shadow Gambit we decided it was the right time to prioritize our well-being and to pull the brakes instead of signing up for another multi-year production cycle,” they explained.
Screenshot from Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (2023), Mimimi Games
Later in their explanation, they detailed that the company’s costs were growing more than its revenues. It stated, “Making these games was amazing and extremely taxing at the same time. Reaching the level of quality Mimimi strives for is hard and requires focus and dedication. We also have to acknowledge that our future production costs are growing faster than potential revenues of our genre. The increased financial pressure and level of risk became unsustainable.”
“Additionally, whenever our games got close to release and were finally fun to play, a new fight for funding of the following projects started, making this a continuous cycle,” they added.
Screenshot from Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (2023), Mimimi Games
They also shared, “As founders and directors, we found it increasingly difficult to strike a balance between fulfilling internal expectations for the studio and being available for our young families. Meeting our goals of quality, company culture and management requires a constant level of energy that we simply can’t provide anymore.”
“Ramping down the company and making Shadow Gambit our final game is an extremely tough decision. We never expected this would be how Mimimi ends. But if even one of us were to break down, fail or burn out, the situation would escalate quickly,” they elaborated. “Ultimately, managing a production on this scale, in combination with an extremely competitive market, proved to be too taxing for us.”
“In light of all of the above, we decided to pull the brakes,” Abé and Roth concluded.
Screenshot from Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (2023), Mimimi Games
READ: Sweet Baby Inc. Influenced ‘Alan Wake 2’ Still Has Not Recouped Its Budget
Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake 2, which Sweet Baby Inc. consulted on, has not recouped its initial budget according to the company. In the company’s most recent Business Review for January to March 2024, it shared, “In February 2024, Remedy announced that Alan Wake 2 had sold 1.3 million units as of the beginning of February. Alan Wake 2 sales have continued with a high average price. At the end of the first quarter, the game had recouped a significant part of the development and marketing expenses.”
It added, “During the first quarter, the team focused on working on the downloadable content (DLC) that will extend Alan Wake 2.”
As noted by Remedy, it has not recouped all of its development and marketing expenses. The company also shared that it does plan to attempt to generate royalty revenue from the game, but has not done so yet.
A screenshot from Alan Wake II (2023), Remedy Entertainment
The recently released Tales of Kenzera: ZAU game also appears to have poor sales given its lackluster player base on Steam. Steam DB reports the game had peak concurrent players of 287 when it released at the end of April. However, peak concurrent players has significantly declined over the last month dipping to just 19 on May 30th. In the past 24 hours the peak was 26.
Sales estimates for the game range between 11,800 and 14,900.
SteamDB data for Tales of Kenzera: ZAU (2024), Surgent Studios
The game’s director Abubakar Salim, who was a partner with Sweet Baby Inc. CEO Kim Belair and co-founder David Bedard in a company called Sucre Bebe LTD or Sweet Baby, claims the game is selling well, but he does not provide any evidence to back up his claim. Furthermore, he claims that if you show the data from Steam DB you are doing so in bad faith to harass him.
He posted on Reddit, “We did good though :) It helps being on multiple platforms. It’s all about longevity and continuing forward. The more people share and talk about the game, the more it snowballs. So yeah, we hope to continue building!”
Abubakar Salim on Reddit
He also addressed this on X writing, “‘The game isn’t selling well.’ Also false. I’ve addressed this on an AMA Reddit. The numbers some are circulating are a fraction of our actual playership, and they’re being shared in bad faith by people who are wanting to provide “proof” that their harassment campaign has been successful in punishing us for daring to take up space.
Abubakar Salim on X
Maybe the biggest failure that Sweet Baby Inc. racked up was ‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.’ The game performed so abysmally terrible that Warner Bros. Discovery had to take a $200 million impairment charge on the game.
The company’s CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels stated, “Starting with Studios, the $400 million+ year-over-year decline during Q1 was primarily due to the very tough comp we faced in games against the success of Hogwart’s Legacy last year in the first quarter, in conjunction with the disappointing ‘Suicide Squad’ release this past quarter, which we impaired, leading to a $200 million impact to EBITDA during the first quarter.”
The game’s player base has also fallen off a cliff. The game had an all-time concurrent peak of 13,459 when the game released in early February. However, by the end of the month the concurrent peak was less than 600. It was able to bring some players back when it released its first Season 1 update with a playable Joker. Concurrent players hit 3,042 on March 28th. However, throughout much of April and May the peak concurrent never even got over 300.
‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ Steam DB charts
What do you make of Avalanche Studios shutting down two of its offices and laying off nearly 10% of its workforce?
