Why must companies die or go bust? I miss LGS and their sequel Thief 2 Gold

[mrjoshua]

I played Thief 1 + 2 + Deadly Shadows + 4, But I was wondering where it all went wrong, LGS had the best of intentions but why they couldnt get another project from eidos if thief 2 was successfull, I mean it must have not been, I played Terra Nova, System Shock, hell untima underworld... Is sequels really that bad if after the second game, the company goes bust

[demagogue]

It was a combination of needing to cover Daikatana flopping, when Eidos somehow got involved, then selling to a software giant as a gambit to cover loses that didn't actually care about making games and just unceremoniously gutted them. Just bad luck really. The games LGS made themselves sold just fine.

[Bikerdude]

when Eidos didn't actually care about making games and just unceremoniously gutted them.

Its one of the many reasons I have have gone right off them along with a lot of other big devs, EA being the worst. I stopped buying any of thier games after they got caught spying on us via origin.

[demagogue]

I was actually talking about 2 different companies, Eidos and the second 'software giant', not Eidos, but a military contractor company that did military tech software, that I guess was interested in diversifying and LGS's sim tech, but (possibly after changed mgt) not gaming. We only found out about it reletively recently.

 

I guess your general point still stands though.

[Goldwell]

I heard that eidos purposefully withheld money (or delayed royalty cheques) from LGS and that caused them to go bust which in turn allowed eidos to buy them.

 

Also if you haven't seen it this video may interest you as its the last day at Looking Glass Studios

 

http://youtu.be/VPFbA8Qmths

[demagogue]

Except Eidos didn't buy them. The military contractor did. That's what I was trying to say. But Eidos still put them in that situation, or contributed to it. Oh, well, it's all explained somewhere.

[Goldwell]

Either way a great company who should have been celebrating not closing after the release of Thief 2 is gone.

[Anderson]

Some of those forces migrated to Ion Storm to make Thief 3, but even that situation didn't last.

Thief 3 was the last game that was the closest to what the franchise was about.

[demagogue]

Or, you know, The Dark Mod.

[Oktokolo]

For me The Darkmod really is even better than the originals (and of course better than the new "Thief" too). So it did not went that wrong in the end i think.

I once was disappointed by the loss of that nice studio (also missed Bullfrog Productions) too. And it really is sad how it happened. But as time flew by The Darkmod raised and it maybe would not have got enough sun in the shadow of a commercial corporation pushing out one quality title after the other causing modders to constantly having to adopt to new engines and tools - maybe even having to open them for modding first.

 

LGS did define the genre and implemented the reference titles. Now others adopt it and do variations on it like the great mappers here do in their FMs. We already have so much more different deviations from the original theme than LGS could have provided.