There is one less game studio now. Hothead Games has shut down
The Canadian studio Hothead Games has become yet another casualty of the year 2024. Today, on December 20, information emerged about the official shutdown of the team, renowned for the mobile sniper simulator Kill Shot.
Kill Shot
The sad news was announced in the studio's LinkedIn profile by CEO and President Ian Wilkinson. According to him, the studio's last working day was last Friday, December 13. The studio had been in operation for 18 years.
From the post, it was revealed that Hothead Games was unable to adapt to new market realities.
Having achieved significant success in the mid-2010s with the Rivals at War and Kill Shot franchises, in the 2020s, it focused on idle projects. However, according to Ian, the team started on such games too late and missed the market.
As a result, it was decided to go back to their roots and focus on creating console titles (the three founders of the company are former employees of Radical Entertainment). For a while, Hothead Games worked as a contractor, developing commissioned games and handling console title porting.
For the past 12 months, the studio had been developing a project based on a AAA franchise. The plan was to release the game simultaneously on mobile devices and on PC/consoles. However, by the end of the year—within just two weeks—both the mobile and console publishers dropped the project.
“The only option left was to declare the company bankrupt,” Ian wrote.
