It looks as if Frostkeep Studios is suffering some downsizing this week. Evan “Scapes” Berman, a producer for the MMO studio and a figure well-known to veteran MMORPG players, tweeted last night that his “Frostkeep family was just disbanded” and he was hunting for new work in the industry.
Frostkeep, MMO players will recall, was a studio helmed by former WoW, LOL, and WildStar devs, all originally working on Rend, which was somewhere between an MMORPG and a survival sandbox. The game even took awards when it was revealed in 2017, and it was gorgeous. But it didn’t quite catch on, and in March of 2019, the devs admitted it was effectively launching the game – straight into maintenance mode with consolidated servers. While Frostkeep’s Jeremy Wood told us some devs would still be working on the game, it was clear that most had been moved to a new project, for which the studio was still hiring as late as November of last year. However, as we noted that same month, Rend itself had dropped down to around a dozen concurrent players as Steam users warned each other the game was dead.
It’s not clear how many staffers were affected and whether the studio will continue on with its secret game, nor what specific effect this will have on Rend’s official servers going forward. We reached out to Frostkeep’s PR last night for a statement and have not yet heard back; we’ll update this when we do. As always, our sympathies are with the rank-and-file devs affected by the situation.
Sadly, my Frostkeep family was just disbanded – enjoyed transitioning from community to game production there.
I'm now exploring new opportunities and am open to Producer or Community Manager roles: https://t.co/FwUfUhb5yy pic.twitter.com/fJDPocVJpR
— Evan Berman (@Scapes) January 7, 2020
