JoWooD Declares Bankruptcy

[Crossborder]

Meh. I don't know how to feel about this. They did publish Arx Fatalis and Gothic, but I remember something about them screwing Deep Silver over or something? I guess I'll just google it.

Oh, and a bit off topic, but the Arx Fatalis developer (Arkane Studios) was bought by Bethesda's parent company some time ago.
Maybe they get to work on Skyrim? I hope so!

 

[Korten12]

Oh well...Gothic 1+2 were awesome but 3 was a buggy convoluted mess. I had preordered the collector's edition from Germany of the third Gothic game, it was so rushed that they didn't have time to print out the jewel case inserts for the discs, they released those a few weeks later as a PDF so we could print them ourselves. Their serious lack of support for their games after Gothic 2 was also appalling, so good riddance I say!

Reccomended spec for Gothic 3 is:
1.5GB RAM
P4 3GHz
ATI x1600 >256MB RAM
4.6GB HDD space

Did you ever download the community patch for G3? Fixed a lot.

 

[standokan]

Damn those internet pirates, with all theyre virtual rum and usb-peglegs

 

[Vhite]

Probably my saddest game moment ever. I loved those games.
I may have been pirate in past but I bought their games even then, some of them even twice.

 

[Leviathan_]

Damnit, I loved Silent Storm!


This is a real shame, really hate to see this

 

[TheMadJack]

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone keeping abreast of gaming news. I foretold this ultimate fate on JoWood's forums before the launch of their last game, Arcania.

Although that title wasn't as bereaved with as many bugs as Gothic 3, this shoddy, at worse, release couldn't repair what had been done to JoWood's already flailing reputation as a publisher.

You can easily judge how professional a company is when it has to ask volunteers to fix a game ailed by so many bugs that their own programmers can't fix as it happened with Gothic 3.

With that said, I find it shameful nonetheless. But in all honesty, this only adds up to one thing. Bad management. You can never take anything for granted. Ever. Obviously this is a hard lesson for JoWood to learn. Let's hope the pill, although it is huge, will be swallowed and digested.

Who knows, if they really take their art at heart, they will come back and offer something worth our money and entertainment.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Gothic 3 really was a mess, and Gothic 4, whatever it was called, tanked pretty hard. You can trace it all back to the ugliness with Piranha Bytes, which as Omicron1 pointed out seems to have recovered from the split better than JoWooD. That's obviously not the only reason for the trouble but it's doubtless a big part. Still, even though JoWooD really shot itself in the foot with that one, I think it's a shame. It brought attention to a lot of games we may otherwise never have seen, and there's that whole Arx Fatalis thing. I'll always love HoWooD for Arx.

 

[viranimus]

Its rather unfortunate but not entirely unpredictable. You could sense for years they were on a slippery slope.

But perhaps there is a silver lining in this that a bigger developer might now step in, and snatch up the rights and IPs for further and future production. I mean is anyone seriously seriously offended by what Bethesda did with the Fallout franchise? So perhaps it could be a good thing.

Still, sad.

 

[nagi]

After running the Gothic franchise to the ground (and kicking out the developers on the way) I have to say I'm not sorry for Jowood. They got what they deserved.

I actually liked even the first buggy release of Gothic 3, (hey, I did play gothic 1-2 with those franctic controls and liked those too!) but the "let's fire the developers of an established series and give it to some beginners" Arcania: gothic 4 was a anything but gothic (or a good game for that matter).

 

[Avayu]

They also did the Cultures series, which is my "game no-one's ever heard of" series.

Ah, thanks, now I remember what game other than Gothic I remember this publisher from. Cultures actually was a nice game, makes me a bit nostalgic to think about it.

 

[Baldr]

It fun to watch crooks and thieves fail. They tried to steal the Stargate license from a small company Perception. The finally lost badly in court (it cost them millions) and destroyed Stargate: The Alliance and Perception Pty despite winning the case.

 

[Antari]

I saw Soldner as a large nail in a future coffin. It certainly took a while. But finally happened. Its a shame they didn't get more exposure, they had some creative ideas. Execution of those ideas, didn't always go to plan though.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

I'm kinda glad. Their games were mostly garbage.

 

[stefman]

never heard of this company or any of its games. but its always sad to see so many people lose their jobs, especially if they loved making games :'(

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

Reading through these comments, I feel bad for never have hearing about this company or pretty much any of their games until now. I think I've heard of Gothic, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about it.

 

[octafish]

Where will the next squad level turn based strategy come from now? Silent Storm, Silent Storm Sentinels, and Hammer and Sickle came a red pubic hairs width of being great games. They were merely very good games, but at least they gave me some hope...

 

[Xeorm]

Only game I remember playing from them was spellforce, which was sorta alright, never got far in it. About the most I remember is the box art.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

They also made the abysmal Spaceforce game. Can't say I'll miss it.

 

[Asehujiko]

Damn those internet pirates, with all theyre virtual rum and usb-peglegs

Yes, those evil pirates fed their management so much rum that they released a game without playtesting(Gothic 3), then decide that they could release a game with playtesting if they cut out 75% of the content(gothic 4) and released that without playtesting too, pulled out of all gaming magazine deals citing a conspiracy that bigger publishers were paying to have their scores lowered, decided to turn an excellent alt-history turn based tactics series into murderously hard faux-historic game(Hammer & Sickle) because of some very whiny faux historians, which predictably sold badly with any other turn based fans and decided to cease all development of their best selling series(Spellforce)!

In case you don't get the sarcasm: JoWood went under because the JoWood management is full of retards, not because people dressed up as Johnny Depp at their computer were retroactively draining their cash reserves.