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Infinity Blade: Dungeons on hold, but Impossible Studios could live on outside of Epic's embrace

Game just wasn't working out

Infinity Blade: Dungeons on hold, but Impossible Studios could live on outside of Epic's embrace
Epic Games has closed Infinity Blade: Dungeons developer Impossible Studios, leaving the project's future in doubt.

Formed in June 2012 as Epic Games Baltimore, the Impossible Studios team was largely comprised of former Big Huge Games employees – staff that had been left jobless after parent company 38 Studios laid off its entire workforce.

Impossible Studios was promptly set to work on existing project Infinity Blade: Dungeons, an isometric dungeon crawler set in the Infinity Blade universe.

Not working out

"When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team," explained Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney in a statement.

"It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn't working out for Epic," Sweeney continued.

This isn't necessarily the end for Impossible Studios though.

"In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with three months of severance pay, we'll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo.

"This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project."

The difficult follow-up

The Infinity Blade series is undoubtedly an important one for Epic. Last year, Sweeney described the first game in the franchise as "the most profitable game we've ever made, in terms of man years invested versus revenue."

On this basis, Infinity Blade is actually "more profitable than Gears of War."
Infinity Blade: Dungeons was announced by Epic president Mike Capps as part of the Apple press event unveiling the third generation iPad. 

It's a high profile title, then, and one that has already faced delays. Whether it will eventually see release, and in what form, is now in question.

[source: Epic Games]
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