Over the course of last year, we had been reporting on Second Wave, an anime-styled hero shooter MOBA from developer Challengers Games that looked to bring plenty of stylish action to the sub-genre. The shooter made its early access launch this past May, followed by some patches and a free-to-play conversion last week, but ultimately it looks as if the shooter – and its dev studio – has gone belly up.
Challengers CEO and studio head Koji Tamura offers a brutal play-by-play of Second Wave’s development track and the multiple difficulties that the project began to face, including waning interest from players and investors, the lancing nickname of “Genshin Watch,” an attempt to keep the studio afloat by releasing a mobile game known as Illang (which also failed), and mounting debt that now totals 2.4 billion won, or $1.7M US.
Despite the challenges, Tamura accentuates the positive in the experience. “I am proud to have created Second Wave, proud and honored to have worked with the team I had,” he writes. “I’m proud of all the feelings we had during the time we were creating Challengers Games and Second Wave. I’m proud that we at least tried. But now it is time for Challengers Games to acknowledge that it is no longer able to do business.”
Despite the end of the shooter and the studio, Tamura still leaves the door open for the game to make a return sometime in the future. “One way or another. We will start over and we will announce things when we are ready,” he asserts. “Thank you for always being there for us and for making us believe in game development again.”
