Having failed to find an appropriate publisher for its "finished, super polished" XBLA word game, Quarrel, developer Denki has announced layoffs of much of its staff. The "major restructuring" -- Develop claims the staff has shrunken from 25 to just 6 -- comes just one week after an exciting new trailer showed off the game's features. The studio hopes to abandon its "old business model" and gain better access to players directly, though it seems the game likely won't be heading to XBLA.
Denki's post posits that the game industry, in its reliance on low-risk projects, "doesn't value good games. Players do, but the games industry doesn't." It also notes that the game will still be released in some form "this year -- supposing we have to bring the board game version round each of your houses one-by-one." Keep your tea and biscuits at the ready! Oh, and also, if you're looking for developers, Denki would be happy to hear from you.
[Thanks, Steven.]
Reader Comments (19)
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 12:32PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said
Crap!
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 12:44PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said
I agree. Would have loved something like this. Especially a word game!
Reply
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 12:51PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said
That's only funny because it's not.
Reply
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 1:05PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said
Popcap could do a lot more with XBLA. I own all their XBLA games and could use more. They are fun, easy to get into, and sometimes challenging. Nice that popcap puts out games I can just hop into for a little bit. Bookworm would be an extreme plus.
Reply
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 12:39PM Lov3 said
Wait, why do XBLA games need publishers?
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 12:54PM 343 Guilty Fart said
But a film needs to be physically distributed, an XBLA game doesn't.
Reply
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 12:43PM baby sea tuna said
Man, this industry.
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 12:51PM whylekat said
What a shame. And it looks like this would've been another addition to the low number of avatar games available.
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 2:12PM Fishdinner said
Just pay $99 and put it out on indie games!
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 2:13PM Trojan said
That's a bummer. I was actually looking forward to this after seeing the trailer last week!
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 3:05PM Softserve said
Lame, this looked pretty awesome.
Posted: Apr 5th 2010 3:36PM (Unverified) said
Shame some people can't read and this article is still posted all over the net as "Denki cancels finished, super-polished xbla game quarrel" as if they weren't gonna have a hard enough time distrubuting
Featured Stories
Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma
Posted on May 25th 2012 3:30PM




