2023 has not been a great year for the video game industry in terms of layoffs and studio closures, and as the year draws to a close, it’s been announced an entire publisher with dozens of games to its name is closing its doors. Versus Evil had become a bit of a rising star in the indie publishing sphere in recent years, publishing the likes of the Pillars of Eternity games, The Banner Saga, Tower of Guns, Faeria, and more. Unfortunately, that success was not enough to keep the publisher’s doors open.
Versus Evil was acquired by publisher TinyBuild back in 2021. TinyBuild had successfully gone public only a few months before, raising hundreds of millions of dollars they used to acquire a number of studios and other publishers. Unfortunately, the deck of cards collapsed in 2023, with TinyBuild recently admitting they’d likely run out of cash as soon as this coming January. The problems at TinyBuild, combined with low sales of recent Versus Evil games, likely sealed the publisher’s fate.
Here’s the brief statement Versus Evil made about the closure via their X account…
“Today is a sad day. After 10 wonderful years, Versus Evil is shutting its doors. We’ve loved bringing you the best indie games we could find & sharing so many happy memories with you all, our amazing community! From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU for everything!”
Versus Evil had a number of games slated for 2024, including the anticipated Broken Roads. The publishing status of these games isn’t exactly known at this time, but the Broken Roads devs have promised development will continue on as before.
“A huge thanks to everyone at Versus Evil who supported us and helped bring Broken Roads to where it is today. We’re still going ahead with development and planning to launch in early 2024.”
Our hearts go out to everyone at Versus Evil who lost their jobs before the holidays, and to all the other folks in the gaming industry who lost their jobs this year. 2023 was a rough one for a lot of people. Here’s to a better 2024.
