Alien: Blackout creators shut down amid COVID-19 crisis

Rival Games, a Finland-based developer best known for its mobile title Alien: Blackout, has closed down.

The closure became inevitable when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted potential partnership opportunities and publisher negotiations.

“I was feeling optimistic about them. Then something happened that I nor the world was prepared for: a global health crisis in the form of a coronavirus. It shut down all the leads that we had and left us lost in the dark with no way out,” said Jukka Laakso, CEO at Rival Games.

While coronavirus played a role in the studio’s demise, Rival Games had been struggling for a while. First, a project that was in pre-development was canned by Universal Studios which resulted in layoffs. Then, the company failed to find investors an external publishers. But even before this, Rival hadn’t seen hasn’t seen any “serious” revenues, according to Laakso.

Alien: Blackout is Rival’s biggest project and one of the few titles in the franchise that was appreciated by critics and players.

Alien: Blackout and the studio’s other title Thief of Thieves: Season One will remain in stores normally. The company’s debut game The Detail will be removed from Steam and AppStore.