Hi-Rez offers unique insight into studio's troubled past, profitable future

Michael Dunaway
By Michael Dunaway, News Editor Posted:
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Hi-Rez has done several not so popular things over the past few months. These things have in so many words...cast doubt over the developers ability, or willingness to support their titles in the long run.

After all, the developer only recently shut down all of their official forums and announced no future updates for Tribes: Ascend. So naturally when it came time to discuss the future of SMITE, players were concerned over whether Hi-Rez would also close the curtain on SMITE once Global Agenda 2 -Hi-Rez's next upcoming title- launches.

In an effort to reassure fans, Hi-Rez's CEO Erez Goren posted a thread titled "What will Hi-Rez do with SMITE?" on the official SMITE Reddit page. In the thread Goren did something unexpected, he broke down the apparent financial failings of Global Agenda and Tribes Ascend.

According to Goren, both Global Agenda and Tribes Ascend were not profitable. Despite continued content creation, both games apparently suffered from a continued decline in user base. When it was all said and done, Global Agenda and Tribes: Ascend cost the developer close to $40 million while only seeing a return of around $10 million. A majority of the money came from Goren's own personal funding.

SMITE on the other hand, is Hi-Rez's golden goose, one the developer intends to keep happy and healthy. Goren recants the MOBA's success in the post when he says:

Smite is one of those rare games that’s actually growing every month, and is also profitable. This is allowing us to grow the Smite team and deliver weekly updates and content (from 15 people initially to about 80 people now). In addition, many outside publishers were interested in Smite and we are fortunate enough to have made a deal with Tencent who is the most prestigious partner we can have for our type of game.

Given everything we know Smite should have a long and successful future which is why we are very excited as a company and continue to work our butts off to make Smite the best Moba game in the world.

So it appears as of now, all is well for SMITE; but what about Tribes: Ascend? Recently, Hi-Rez made mention of the possibility of adding mod support to the FPS, giving players the opportunity to continue development. According to the Reddit post, this is no longer an option.

Speaking specifically about Tribes: Ascend, Goren spoke about community created content stating:

Some people have asked for us to provide more tools for community content creation, but our infrastructure and development platform does not support that ability well and the cost and time to develop those features is extremely high.

Oh so this was all just off the record then? The gesture of transparency is nice to see from a developer, however it is still only a gesture. Actions are what speak louder than words and as of now Hi-Rez's previous actions have spoken loud and clear. A good way for Hi-Rez to win back the overwhelming support of their player-base would be to use some of SMITE's profitability to finish what was promised only a few short months ago.

What are your thoughts?

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About the Author

Michael Dunaway
Michael Dunaway, News Editor

Michael Dunaway has been part of the MMOBomb team for years and has covered practically every major Free-to-Play MMO title since 2009.

More Stories by Michael Dunaway

Discussion (17)

Anonymous 10 years ago
I wonder how much of that 40 million was spent on Tribes, getting close to the level of failure that the original launch of APB was if he's telling the truth.

Lithkul 10 years ago
.....Hi-rez needs to grow up, they violated their own communities trust not once but several times and the most recent time was even a legal violation, every time the community wanted them to do something they said no and did something else. Tribes: Ascend they made into a E-sports game and never even tried to produce half the promises they made. They completely ignored community advice and tried to go away from the Tribes Franchise as they could. I had friends literally waiting to spend money on Tribes:Ascend if they actually kept in the real spirit of Tribes which they never did. For global Agenda...they didn't even bother finishing the game, updating it, patching it, creating enough battlegrounds or anything. So yeah, I'm not about to play anymore of their games when they won't even respect their consumers legal rights.

Jakoul 10 years ago
Um.. what? I think the reason Tribes and Global Agenda are doing bad is simply because they are bad games. With the exception of some hardcore fans (every game gets them) most people can't stand playing the same game for months let alone years.

I mean, Tribes is just gotta go fast with trick shots and Global Agenda has more key spamming than PVP in an MMORPG. Meanwhile Smite is a 3D view moba which makes it a hell of a lot more fun.

Is it really any surprise Tribes and Global Agenda are so dead? Honestly, kudos to Hi-Rez for not flat out killing the games like most developers/publishers would.

Hank 10 years ago
Global Agenda was an amazing game. I hope they can deliver again with #2. If not i hope to enjoy it for the first 2 months before they shut down it's forums and all future development. Thanks Hi-Rez!

MidgetPanda 10 years ago
NOO global agenda was so cool! GIVE ME GA 2 NOW OR ELSE I WILL BLOW UP THE OFFICE BUILDING HI-REZ WORKS IN!!! jk but this is basically what I feel like right now. :(

zabisukex 10 years ago
Smite ROCKS!!!!

Reavermyst 10 years ago
I really don't trust Hi-Rez at this point. I think the largest reason behind the decline is their shutting down of the forums. By doing that, they've practically removed the notion of a official community and, at the same time, created a social disconnect within their titles making them less interesting. Add to their other questionable practices, who would want to support them?

If Hi-Rez wanted their games to profit, they should've focused on their player base by giving them a reason to support them by creating content folks would be interested in paying for and creating content that would keep players invested in their titles. An example of what they're doing wrong, is seen in their plans for the newest Global Agenda game(which I'm unsure about that even be a thing at this point) is going to be a competitive game and everything else that made the last installment pretty fun. If they went for that but improved on the previous game's mechanics, they could've impressed a much larger crowd.

So really, they're just making piss poor design decisions in their games and in the end, we get rushed games that fail to keep our attention.

View 1 reply
ale 10 years ago
puedo seguir escribiendo??

ale 10 years ago
FRIST!!!!!! LOL EXELENT!!! WIIIII SO GREAT :-p

View 1 reply
ale 10 years ago
mmmm noc q escribir asi q escribi esto :-D


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