Renegade Kid, developer of Mutant Mudds and Xeodrifter, has closed down, co-founders Jools Watsham and Gregg Hargrove announced today. This brings an end to their 10-year partnership, but their friendship and respect for each other is “still very much intact.”
As for their intellectual properties, Watsham and Hargrove are splitting them into 2D and 3D categories. Watsham will receive the rights to all of Renegade Kid’s 2D games, including the Mutant Mudds series and Treasurenauts, and he’ll continue to develop games through his new company, Atooi. Hargrove will get the rights to all of the 3D games, including the Dementium series and Moon Chronicles, and he’ll continue to developer games through his new company, Infitizmo.
Watsham explained in an interview with Nintendo Life why they decided to close down Renegade Kid:
The video game industry has changed a lot in the past 10 years that we’ve been developing games as Renegade Kid. From the very beginning, it has always been a challenge to secure partnerships with publishers to fund the development of original games, and since the advent of self-publishing – when digital distribution became more mainstream – it has shifted our business model towards becoming more dependent on revenue instead of seeking funding from publishing partners.
As such, it has been a great financial challenge and an extreme workload for the entire team to maintain a balance between cash flow, staying competitive with our games, and spending quality time with our families and friends. Couple these realities with the desire to achieve personal goals, Gregg and I came to the difficult decision to each pursue solo ventures and close Renegade Kid.
Starting fresh with small, lean teams enables us both to focus more on less moving parts and potentially achieve better success. It puts both Atooi and Infitizmo in more advantageous positions.
Watsham is set to announce a new 3DS/iOS game this week, while Hargrove said, “My next projects are currently not something I can make public unfortunately but I want to expand on both Moon and Dementium in the future and there is a new mystery project in the works for the near future.”
[Source: Renegade Kid, Nintendo Life, Atooi]
