While Suicide Squad was quite a flop, Hogwarts Legacy sold incredibly well. Nevertheless, Warner Bros. wants to The Sinking City 2: Frogwares announces Kickstarter campaign

After diving into Lovecraft horror last year, Frogwares is continuing this year. Last night, the studio officially announced The Sinking City 2

After diving into Lovecraft horror last year, Frogwares is continuing this year. Last night, the studio officially announced The Sinking City 2

In the summer of 2019, Frogwares released The Sinking City together with Bigben Interactive. Since then, the Ukrainian development studio has focused primarily on the Sherlock Holmes franchise.
The remaster of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened released last year already offered a good dose of Lovecraft horror, so we can look forward to seeing how the studio continues to delve into the spooky universe with The Sinking City 2.

As Frogwares explains in its press release, they want to reinvent themselves with The Sinking City 2 and take a “horror first “ approach. With this in mind, the gameplay will focus primarily on Combat, Exploration and Lovecraft-Setting To create the right atmosphere, the studio relies on Unreal Engine 5.
Layers of Fear, which was released last year, already showed that the engine is very well suited to horror settings.

Despite the focus on Lovecraft horror, Frogwares has not forgotten its investigative roots. In The Sinking City 2, too, there will be opportunities for detective investigations, but these are entirely optional.
Players should decide for themselves when and where they want to become sleuths in order to uncover new secrets, lore elements and new paths

Frogwares asks the community for help again

The ongoing war in Ukraine continues to hamper Frogwares’ development work. That’s why the development studio is once again turning to its community and asking for funding via Kickstarter. CEO Wael Amr himself explains just how important the fans’ help is:

Through Kickstarter and our supporters, we have built a safety net that has saved us more than once
saved us once. From power outages when our electrical infrastructure was under attack for months, to having to relocate team members at very short notice. This financial safety net has been invaluable to us. That’s why we need to
The Sinking City 2, because this game is much bigger and more complex.

The Sinking City 2 Kickstarter campaign is set to launch soon. Anyone who would like to support the studio in its development can do so here here. The horror game is expected 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S to be released.

focus on service games.

Mobile, Free2Play and service games are the future, the head of Warner Bros. Gaming is convinced, as he reveals

during an event

In his article, however, J.B. Perrette cites two games of all things that seem to prove the opposite, namely Hogwarts Legacy and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

Does that even make sense?

The Harry Potter game doesn’t fit any of these trends: However, as a pure single-player role-playing game with an open world, it was able to set several impressive recordslast year. For example, it is one of the titles with the most simultaneously active Steam users worldwide, was one of the best-selling games of 2023 and generated an estimated 2 billion US dollars in revenue for Warner.

Suicide Squad, on the other hand, is considered a flop: At its launch, there were just 13,000 active players on Steam at its peak, which has since dropped to just a few hundred. The shooter also struggled with poor ratings. Warner Bros. itself admitted that the game had not met expectations

While Perrette acknowledges the success of Hogwarts Legacy and the failure of Suicide Squad, he draws a conclusion that will probably come as a surprise to many: Warner doesn’t want to move away from service games like Suicide Squad now, for example, and focus on single-player experiences.

Instead, the company believes that the market is far too volatile to rely on big productions like these two games. The focus should be much more on mobile, Free2Play and service games:

Instead of releasing a big console game, how do we develop a game about, say, Hogwarts Legacy, or Harry Potter, that is a live service where people can live, work, build and play in this world permanently?

Service games would help Warner Bros. generate reliable revenue as fans play them over the years and spend money on them.

The decision has raised eyebrows across the industry. Insider Tom Henderson describes the decision as an “interesting maneuver” and points to the success of Hogwarts Legacy:


After releasing Hogwarts Legacy which did 22 million units in 1 year and releasing Suicide Squad which failed to meet company expectations, this is sure a move. https://t.co/SQQZ3qMR3b