The studio behind Mavericks: Proving Grounds has appointed administrators.
Mavericks: Proving Grounds, announced by UK-based Automaton, was first shown in February 2018. It claimed a 12x12km world map, with a 400-player battle royale mode as a vertical slice of a multiplayer game that could handle up to 1000 concurrent players.
It was a bold, our razer blade has more blades than the next competitor-style claim, but in a world chock-full of PUBG clones of varying quality, developers need to do something to stand out.
Sadly, Mavericks: Proving Grounds will not be coming to fruition.
In a statement on its website today, Automaton announced that it had appointed joint administrators to manage “the affairs, business and property of the company.” Typically insolvency administrators will attempt to retain the operating status of a company if they believe it can continue to function while a buyer can be found, but their priority is to repay a company’s creditors and offer adequate redundancy to staff. In this instance, it looks like Automaton is being wound down with fairly immediate effect.
“Please be advised that due to insufficient funding, the development of the Mavericks: Proving Grounds game has now ceased,” the statement continues. “The joint administrators are in the process of licensing the Deceit game so there will be no change in the live operation and provision of this game.”
In a world that barely maintains the popularity of three major battle royale games – PUBG, Fortnite Battle Royale, and Apex Legends – with efforts from major franchises like Battlefield’s Firestorm and Call of Duty’s Blackout hovering around the periphery, its no surprise to see battle royale games falling by the wayside with metronomic regularity.
Losing an interesting-sounding game like Mavericks: Proving Grounds is a shame, but it is the human cost of studio closures that hits hardest. LinkedIn lists the Cambridge-based developer as having between 11 and 50 members of staff.
Here’s hoping they find new roles and projects.
Via Eurogamer.
