Remember back in July, when Automaton Games announced it was shutting down Mavericks, a “massive” battle royal that was aiming to put 1000 people on the battlefield? Even at the time, the closure seemed sudden, as the studio was at E3, running alphas, and hiring in the months beforehand, but the closure message said development had ended “due to insufficient funding” and that the studio’s other game had transferred to the care of the company’s new administrators, David Rubin & Partners.
Well, we’ve gotten another clue as to just what’s going on with that, as this week PC Games Insider penned a piece revealing that SpatialOS company Improbable – yes, this was a SpatialOS game – had yanked funding following a period of growth in overhead for the game. That info comes by way of an administrator’s proposal document filed with the UK’s Companies House. “Improbable was unwilling to inject any further funds into the business in order to continue development of the Mavericks game,” the document says, meaning Automaton was “facing immediate cash flow issues” as Improbable was ending funding “within the shortest reasonable notice period.”
Improbable told PC Games Insider its funding was always intended to be a temporary loan while Automaton “looked for longer-term funding,” but when that didn’t happen, “Automaton decided that the right course of action was to enter administration.” Improbable also says that it found “a significant number of Automaton Games employees new roles with Improbable.” Over $1.6M US is apparently still owed by Automaton to the SpatialOS company. It was not, until now, clear that Improbable had ever been funding the game.
