Elemental predicted to make a loss, Stardock CEO says it's worthwhile to restore trust

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Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell has said that Stardock expect Elemental: War of Magic to make a loss for the company in the long term, but that it's worth pushing ahead with development and expansions to restore PC gamers' faith.

Speaking to Gamasutra , Wardell said that "Elemental made its money back on day one and has continued to be profitable to this point. However, based on our projections we anticipate by the end of second quarter 2011 that Elemental will end up losing money overall as our objective is to spend what is necessary to ensure that the game meets the expectations of our customers,"

He adds that "while this short-term loss is unfortunate, it is crucial in the long term that PC gamers know that the Stardock name means quality and support."

Stardock recently hired the former lead designer on Civilization V, Jon Shafer, to work on Elemental, while science fiction author Dave Stern has been brought in to beef up the storytelling. Stardock are still working on patching up the game and are planning to release expansions for the game in the future.

For more, check out our Elemental review and our updated look at the game after the recent major 1.1 patch.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.