Volition, the Saints Row and Red Faction creator is shutting down

Announced effectively immediately overnight, Volition, the studio who created the Saints Row and Red Faction series is shutting its doors. After thirty years as a company and surviving previous company restructures and acquisitions, Volition is no more. The announcement was made via a post on the developer’s LinkedIn page, which we’ve included for you below.

For those playing at home, Volition started its roots in 1993 and in its early days created titles such as Descent, Freespace and Red Faction. However, the company is more known for the Saints Row series these days, including the middling series reboot that came out last year. Prior to this, their last game was 2017’s Agents of Mayhem. Though both were far from successful games, one would hope that their legacy and thirty years in the industry would mean the studio could hold strong. This is after all the very same Volition that survived prior publisher THQ’s bankruptcy to be picked up by (then) Koch Media in 2012.

Still, this sadly wasn’t enough as Embracer Group, the parent company of Koch Media (now called Plaion) chose to close the studio. The assumption is that this is following the announcement made by Embracer Group earlier this year that they would start closing down studios and cancelling projects after a $2 billion partnership deal (reportedly said to be with Saudi government funded company Savvy Games Group) fell through. Embracer Group has since confirmed that they still own the rights to the Saints Row and Red Faction franchise.

This follows a worrying trend of studio closures, with the developers Mimimi Games, creators of the Shadow Tactics series and the recent Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew also announced to be closing this week. Hopefully, those affected can find good work before long.