Up until recently, action-RPG sequel Lords of the Fallen 2 was being developed by two separate studios. However, a dispute over work quality has led to the jettisoning of co-developer Defiant Studios. Original Lords of the Fallen 2 developer CI Games will now handle full development responsibilities going forward.
Lords of the Fallen 2 Developer Disputes
According to a report from Eurogamer, CI Games wasn’t happy with the quality of the work Defiant was producing. CI had brought Defiant on to help with Lords of the Fallen 2 just last year. However, CI alleges that Defiant was unable to meet a minimum standard of quality despite multiple requests:
“The termination of the agreement was submitted due to inadequate execution by Defiant [of] a key work stage, a so-called vertical slice. 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 founder and managing director David Grijns was quick to fire back, however, with a statement he gave to Eurogamer:
“We categorically disagree with the portrayal of Defiant Studios made by CI Games,” he said. “The team that was working on CI Games’ project was comprised 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.”
It has been a pretty rocky road for Lords of the Fallen 2 so far. Development on the sequel had been stalling before Defiant was brought on to get things back on track. As of this writing, no official media has been released for Lords of the Fallen 2 either. Since Defiant wanted to start over from scratch, CI Games definitely has its work cut out for it.
What happened with CI Game and Defiant also isn’t too different from what recently happened with the upcoming 2020 Call of Duty game. Previous developer Sledgehammer Games has been relegated to a support role, with Treyarch taking over lead development duties.
Thanks, PC Gamer.