News that Square Enix is selling much of its back catalog hit the wires today. Anyone know if Boundless is affected, or is Square Enix Collective separate enough that the news is irrelevant?
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Looks like they cash on the bigger titles to raise funds for their planned investments in “blockchain, artificial intelligence and the cloud”.
Would be interesting if they would sell Boundless to someone, that would mean someone is interested in it, and maybe kick-start development.
I don’t think Square own Boundless. The article I read mentioned that games that they published for other devs weren’t included e.g. Life is Strange.
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true true, they don’t own the IP
at this point for me, no news is good news. as if we would get anything at this point, it would be one of 2, either it would shut down, or development restarts, so if it’s neither, than still good, still can fuel my planet for another month with ease.
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This is right. Based on the crusty old outdated copyright you see when you boot up Boundless, it’s not Squenix’s property to sell. As Phil pointed out a while ago - and I won’t @ summon him because I doubt he has anything new to add - they’re financial backers but still follow Wonderstruck’s lead in terms of what happens to the game.
If anything, based on this current strategy, my guess would be that Square-Enix Collective is probably in danger of being scaled back or shut down entirely, which would only increase the likelihood of them cutting off the flow of Boundless $$$ sooner rather than later. There’s been no such announcement yet, but if they feel like they’ve taken on too big of a portfolio then I’m sure their least profitable investments would make an easy target.
From what I can find, S.E. is planning to keep Square Enix Collective. Excerpt from page 2 of their notice to investors:
"Going forward, the Company’s development function will comprise its studios in Japan, Square Enix
External Studios, and Square Enix Collective. The Company’s overseas studios will continue to
publish franchises such as Just Cause, Outriders, and Life is Strange."
-
Link to the notice (PDF file)
They’ve got Boundless on the front page with 2 of their current hot games:
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Power wash sim is a surprisingly hot game tbh. Even flipping markiplier and the game theorist did multiple videos on it. If only Boundless actually had the deep lore to attract the lore crowd, it might actually get featured in one of those mammoth YouTube channels that get millions of engaged viewers.
I have never been satisfied with the shallow hints of lore we ended up with. It has the promise of a big space drama, but never goes deeper than the first half of act one.
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Wow, nice catch finding that PDF! I had to backtrack from the link just to figure out where you found that on their website.
What was his name? Ben, I think?.. I remember that we had one guy on the forums who seemed REALLY invested in game lore - from the alphabet to clothing ideas and everything in-between. And then he just… went dark one day. I get the feeling that they never found a replacement for the role.
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Ben got what he considered a dream job at another studio, so we were all really happy for him but he did leave some rather large shoes unfilled.
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