For those who enjoyed Hard West, Phantom Doctrine, and/or Ancient Space, here's some sad news.
It seems CreativeForge Games, at least as we know it, no longer exists, since the whole team quit.
The lead developer on Phantom Doctrine and Hard West, and former CEO of the company for a brief period, posted the following on RPGCodex:
«Dear Codexians,
I do lurk here frequently, and I must apologize for not replying to any questions - things have been rather hectic.
I will try to make it brief, and here are the major bullet points:
- PD didn't sell as expected (there's little doubt it will break even somewhere along the way, but in Poland your game is always compared to Witcher 3 and Frostpunk )
- hence the previous, original CEO "resigned" (strong House of Cards vibe here)
- I was asked to step up, and I did (my major reason being keeping the team intact)
- we supported PD as much as it could have been supported (having lost the lead programmer) without jeopardizing daily operations
- late Dec it became clear that the CEO role was to become a shareholder puppet (you can check out the company statue changes prepped to be voted in late Jan)
- that was when I flipped the table and resigned from the CEO job
- the moment it became apparent that we'll have to struggle with even basic operation tasks, I grabbed that table mid-air and flipped it again and quit
- and the rest of the team also quit
- and CFG as you know it ceased to exist
- but on our last days on the company payroll we yet managed to push out as much as was possible of the modding support
The Polish game dev job market is in very good shape (imagine HR people dressed as mad max-ian warboys scouting the wasteland and fighting for any experienced gamedevs they can find) so there's no drama here, and meanwhile a handful of us came together and will try to do something. »
They fix the least of PD problems. They still have glaring problems with MKULTRA and negligable and unbalanced rewards. Cosmetic changes is the last thing they should care for
rpgcodex.net
I was searching around, and it seems he and a few other members of the team started a new company called Artificer.
Here's their twitter account:
As mentioned above, before everyone quit, they released a big update with mod tools and new content for Phantom Doctrine.
Phantom Doctrine Full Clearance Update 1.1 Greetings, Agents! We are back with another patch for Phantom Doctrine, this time introducing Update 1.1! ːsteamhappyː You will finally be able to alter the foundations of your spy agency by meddling with our declassified parameter sheets, and include...
steamcommunity.com