“Hyenas” was discontinued in Europe due, among other things, to its low profitability. Now there are new details about the discontinued live service shooter, according to which it is the game with the largest budget that Sega has ever had.
Although “Hyenas” advertised his appearance at gamescom 2023, the sad news followed just around a month later that the work on the live service shooter were set. The Japanese publisher Sega not only canceled the development of “Hyenas”, but also of several unannounced titles.
Anonymous developers have now confirmed to VGC that a lack of orientation, disruptive engine changes and an overly cautious design led to the game’s demise. But there are even more shocking details about the game.
Hyenas was Sega’s biggest budget game
According to the sources, “Hyenas” was an ambitious, big-budget title. The team hoped to recoup their expenses through high sales figures. In November 2021, Sega announced that it would invest up to 839 million euros in its “super games” over a period of five years, including “Hyenas”.
It is not known exactly what share of the money “Hyenas” received. But a former developer thinks it was the largest budget Sega has ever invested in a game. The most expensive game to date was “Shenmue” from 1999 for Sega, which reportedly cost 67 million euros.
The title was originally supposed to be developed using the same engine as Alien: Isolation, but using the tools was so frustrating that the development team switched to the Unreal Engine. This led to part of the team being temporarily withdrawn from “Total War”.
Further reports on “Hyenas”:
In addition, Hollywood director Neill Blomkamp visited the development studio and gave tips on the direction of the game. For example, he had the idea of incorporating a little internet humor and showed his ideas with a mood video. The team was grateful to him because they were no longer completely disoriented.
At some point, Creative Assembly and Blomkamp parted ways, but despite the studio visit, the game’s direction and business model remained unclear. During development, “Hyenas” switched to the free-to-play model, but that ultimately couldn’t save it.
Those: VGC
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