Industry insider explains why EA's 'Immortals of Aveum' was a $125 million flop

Immortals of Aveum was released in August 2023 and was met with hardly any attention, and the attention that it got wasn't what EA was expecting.

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The game was released at a time when many heavy hitter titles were also released, such as Diablo 4, Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, and more. This release window certainly contributed to the game's lack of attention and its eventual failure, as indicated by EA's decision to lay off about 45% of the workforce behind the studio. Furthermore, the studio's CEO, Bret Robbins, blamed the poor performance of the title on the busy release calendar, but that may not be the only reason it failed.

An anonymous former employee at the studio that developed the game spoke to IGN and explained the general idea for the game, combined with the development costs, marketing costs, and the fact that it was a new IP releasing among established IPs was the real reason it failed.

The former employee said EA put down $85 million to develop the game and added $40 million for marketing. Despite there being "serious talent" on the development team, the former employee said the decision to make Immortals a "AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea".

This problem was only exacerbated by the fact Immortals was "a new IP that was also trying to leverage Unreal Engine 5," and the end result at launch was "a bloated, repetitive campaign that was far too long."

Another anonymous employee still working at Ascendant also spoke to IGN, saying, "It's not a sequel or a remake; it doesn't take 400 hours to beat, has zero microtransactions, no pointless open-world grinding. Although not everyone loved it, it reviewed pretty well, currently sitting at a 74 on OpenCritic and a Mostly Positive on Steam. No one bought it."