Lords of the Fallen 2 studios fall out over quality of work, one leaves project

News
By published

"We categorically disagree with the portrayal of Defiant Studios made by CI Games."

One of the two studios making action-RPG Lords of the Fallen 2 has left the project after a disagreement over the quality of their work.

CI Games, one of the co-developers of the original Lords of the Fallen, brought in New York-based developer Defiant Studios last year to give the sequel a "fresh start". Defiant was supposed to rebuild the game from scratch but has now left the project, with CI Games claiming Defiant's work wasn't good enough. CI Games will now finish development fully in-house.

In a press release this week, translated by Eurogamer, CI Games said the partnership had been terminated "due to inadequate execution...of a key work stage", which it said was a "vertical slice" of the game. "The quality of the work was lower than expected by the company, as precisely described in the agreement, despite three calls to improve the quality of this stage of work."

Defiant's founder David Grijn disputed the characterization of his studio's work, telling Eurogamer that its Lords of the Fallen 2 development team was made up of "exceedingly talented developers whose work we fully stand behind.

"Our team knows how to build quality games as is evident by their key roles in Just Cause 3, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Far Cry 5, Devil May Cry (DmC) and many other top-tier projects.

"As we intend to abide by our contractual confidentiality obligations, at this time we cannot expand further on this matter," he added.

The first Lords of the Fallen was a decent Dark Souls-esque ARPG, let down by crashes and poor performance. Here's Tyler's review.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.