Aeon Must Die Releases; Former Devs Respond & Reveal New Game

About 14-months ago, there was this thing that mildly blew up in the news, but since then very little has been said about it. It was August’s PlayStation State of Play that first properly revealed Aeon Must Die from Focus Home Interactive and Limestone Games. As the news was breaking about the game’s release, there was a story behind the scenes. Those who worked on the majority of Aeon Must Die were subject to crunch, bullying and a lack of management. Additionally, when requesting resources staff would be told to just bring in office supplies from home, and backdated contracts misrepresented the work done along with how much compensation should be given out.

In short, it was a complete and utter mess. However, if you’ve spent some time around the gaming news sites these last few days, none of them will tell you that Aeon Must Die was released on the 14th of October, which was yesterday. Moreover, all those that stepped forward after being fired or resigning from Limestone Games, announced their new game late last week. This group of former employees banded together to form a new studio after leaking the game ahead of its announcement last year. Moreover, a day before Aeon Must Die was released on Steam and consoles, Mishura Games released a public statement.

I won’t go into the semantics of international copyright law or how any of that works because, well, neither you nor I know exactly how that works at the best of times. However, a large portion of the points raised by those now working at Mishura Games clearly details who owns the IP. It cites that as a result of former Limestone Games’ CEO and creative director doing a large portion of the animation work, he retains rights to how the IP of Aeon Must Die is used. Furthermore, another person that worked on the trailer for the games’ announcement claims to retain rights for that work done while lacking payment for said work. This is why the game’s trailer was taken down from YouTube for a short while back in September of last year.

The entire statement goes into some detail on the negotiation between Limestone and Focus Home Interactive’s side and those presently working at Mishura Games. However, within the statement, it is said that negotiations previously had fallen silent and what little progress was being made this time around was an attempt to underpay and silence those who first spoke up. Moreover, it is noted that while the response from Focus Home Interactive (linked above) was to start an investigation, nothing has since been published or stated on that front. Mishura Games is now asking to see that report and have it published, as they believe no such investigation was done.

Mishura Games also want to make it clear that their new game, Immortal: And the Death that Follows, is in no way connected to or a continuation of what Aeon Must Die was aiming for. They point out that reason for any similarity to the team’s previous work is entirely just that, a creative team working on a project that employs the same visual style that is said to be of 90s anime style. Meanwhile, they maintain that everything from the code of the game, to the assets you can see, is entirely new. The only thing that would make this case a little more disordered right now would be state and federal lawsuits that are eating themselves up while nonsense carries on.