I's not that simple. In many cases just after being acquired developer has a window to release a good game with bigger budget than it was planned. And then corporate managers are invading production and making the next a waste. Like Bulfrog before EA released Magic Carpet, Syndicate and High Octane, nobody is remembering now. And just after contract with EA they released Dungeon keeper - a legend predisestor of Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld and many more smaller game. Of some of Minecraft systems too. Even in the same ganre, Popoluos was much less developed than Dungeon Keeper. But after they they released Dungeon keeper 2, with much lower quality, some more siquels and were disbanded. By rumors exactly because of corporate "optimisation" of spending. So there is a window of opportunity. But it rarely makes for long.
@@iamaim2847 In my experience any independent dev that gets bought out by a publisher will get one, two MAX good games out before the new owners destroy the publisher in order to make more profit.
Was it Stillfront fault thou? Their games after Civil War were getting worse and worse, its even hard to say, that they were rushed to release, as they have been in development hell for eternity. Civil War was great, but it may as well have been a fluke, its not like they had a rich history of producing many interesting games. Gettysburg was like a proof of concept, and Civil War an actual game, after that they tried to do naval stuff and failed miserably, then they tried to do Civil War but bigger and better, and they havent made any progress for like 2 years. Maybe Russians being dickheads are to blame for studio makeing worse games after the war has started, its hard to say.
I'd argue Age of Sail was good, but it was more niche than CW or Gettysburg, I also realize slow naval combat is not for everyone, but as someone who grew up playing Talonsoft's Age of Sail 2, I really enjoyed it. I also think Gettysburg was good, I don't think it was a proof of concept so much as a barebones game from a team that didn't have a lotta resources yet. CW being better than Gettysburg was almost certainly due to Gettysburg being successful and bankrolling CW. My main issue with Stillfront is it seemed like a dubious strategy to acquire GameLabs in the first place. It never made sense to me unless they were planning to really invest in PC gaming, because they were a mobile centric group. If they were trying to really dig into PC gaming, the other actions by the company didn't make that obvious.
@@cezarysieczka7012 I totally agree, for me, the pinnacle of their games was indeed UG:CW. I still play it occasionally, it's my most played game on Steam with over 2k hours invested in it. Like you, IMHO after CW everything was downhill. So at least we now know why UG:AR jumped from v0.6 to(not finished)full release v1.0 lol.
@@thehistoricalgamer Hey man, having had this discussion over on Hetman's server, (we saw this about the same time and came to the unsavory conclusion that-there was going to be an unsavory conclusion...) I would just like to volunteer this. I was a moderator over on CA's official boards for years, years ago. When Sega forced its way into that studio, some of the emphasis was in fact to convert some CA gameconcepts and gamestyles over to mobile. This has been done. While not all of it has been successful, some of it has. While the mergers were not the same at all, and Sega certainly had the PC objective in mind, and other things as well (movie IPs, over-arching utility of mocap, etc), there _was_ that mobile focus too. It may be that the mobile conversion was a hoped-for result based on their observation of Sega, and a hoped-for springboard into PC gaming was a step too far. With nothing hitting the mark as you have suggested in the PC world, nor anything sufficiently popular to fuel a mobile conversion, maybe even a lack of the technical muscle (or possibly will) to make the mobile hurdle, the acquisition has garnered the attention of the choppers. I am just saying it is quite possible that StillFront essentially viewed the studio as possibly just a means of furthering its core business to begin with, and the PC angle was just a hopeful daydream offered by whoever thought the buyout was a good idea anyway (which very well could have come from the GL side). Still, nice work and appreciated your looking around on this for more data points. ~Dim
Having dealt with both UAD and NA, and keeping an eye on the Steam Community Forums for both, I'm laying a good portion of the blame at the feet of the devs as well. The devs made it quite clear thru various posts on the forums, that they were developing the games that THEY wanted to play, and that frankly, they didn't give a hairy rat's rear end what their player base and potential customers had to say - unless it was unqualified praise of their absolute genius. As an example, in UAD, after the hot mess that was the multiplayer DLC, many asked on the forums why they'd tried to turn UAD into a multiplayer game, instead of making a Co-op mode that many people had already asked for. The reply, from Nick himself, was "we (the devs) don't play co-op games, we're not interested in co-op games, we hate games with co-op modes - therefore there will never be a co-op mode in UAD". In short, they told their customers, flat out, "we're making the game that WE want, take it or leave it". And that's before you even get into the multitude of other issues, that UAD has had since first being offered six-plus years ago, as an early access game straight from Game Labs, and have never been adequately addressed.
I do think theres something to say about sticking to your creative chops, too many games bend to the will of their community for the worse... But that requires good judgement and thats not what im seeing here 😂
Pretty much this. Been a long term player of UAD since it was in pre-release and the game that was promised is absolutely not the game that we got as a "released" game. The laughable MP DLC release was the signal that the game was basically on its last legs financially.
The core of UA:D (building big ships to shoot at other big ships) was a good game, a gem. Once Game Labs tried to go beyond that core, they were clueless ... which has been a common pattern for them. The engine was limited to single core processing, so never truly scalable. The shipbuilding AI was primitive. The battle AI and campaign management AI weren't any better. The campaign was never properly developed into a semi-realistic and enjoyable experience that would truly support that core game. So, the devs fiddled with armor-piercing mechanics, new hulls, and bug "fixes" in six years of updates. Hopefully, this title could get sold to a studio focused on technical competence & scalability, that will redo the AGI and campaign mechanics from scratch for a UA:D2 ... but I won't hold my breath waiting.
Every developer decision and "balancing" change made in the last two years to UAD has been disastrous. Every change makes things worse, the problems don't get fixed, and the alleged fixes don't actually fix anything while creating new problems. Highly requested features get either rudely and bluntly denied, or they say " yeah we'll do that" and then proceed to never actually do it (selectable gun models, anyone?). I don't know if it was Nick or a different dev but whoever was the one making all the dev posts was very combative and rude every time anyone had anything to say that wasn't falling all over themselves with praise. Naval Action started out great until they started cheesing it too much. When the AI started being able to turn on a dime faster than you could sail at your best point of wind and keep guns on you at all times plus make 30 knots in their 1st rate ships of the line, and when they started threatening to shut down the more popular PvE server because they wanted to force everyone into PvP (until all the PvE players threatened to demand refunds and review bomb them if they did, so they backed down), and when they absolutely destroyed trading and crafting mechanics and then started allowing clans to own and control ports which marginalized small clans or independent players...that's when that game died. Once upon a time it was the best option for Age of Sail games, but they destroyed that by dumbing it down and making it too arcade-y. I find myself disagreeing with The Historical Gamer's closing sentiments about it being sad to see this company die. I think it needed to. Violently. In fire. Hopefully modders can save UA:D now that there's not going to be a new mod-breaking patch every two days and hopefully the new management can save Sea Legends from what Game Labs would have done to it on the current trajectory they as a company were on.
Also patches came when they felt working on them, and not on a regular schedule. Game got abandoned for months, and than they started suddenly working on it. And when the patches came, they did it on the fly. Trial and error. So when they patched the game there were initially more bugs afterwards than before. They usually made a "Beta-Patch"-version for larger updates, but that test phase was just a week or two. And than they rolled out the patch anyway, despite having created new and obvious issues. Than you got daily new bugfixes, and this messed every time with mods.
I suspect we're eventually going to see a grand-scale and historically decent Napoleonic strategy game within the next five-ish years. Whole generations of developers have been raised on NTW, ETW, UG:ACW, Holdfast, Mount and Blade: NW, and other games in that era. Keep the faith.
It sucks unfortunately this type of game is a very niche product and a mobile developer will always be the wrong company to manage this type of product.
Sad news if this is it. I have gotten 800 hours out of UA Dreadnaughts and am thankful for what the modders are doing with the game. For fans of the other games I hope that their games get taken care of as well.
Yeah... And I bought UAD as I kinda got fed up with rule the waves series development and RTW 2 free update turning into to a DLC and eventually being released as a "new" game that's just the same game as the previous two in the series with some changes here and there, still looking, feeling and operating like an excel sheet from 90's... And increased price while being released under a publisher without much reason to get a publisher... Both RTW and UAD have their strong points and weaknesses... But I don't have much hope for either anymore. Should've guessed from the absolute shitshow from what the UAD multiplayer overpriced DLC was. Lucky I didn't buy it.
@@AssassinAgent IDK man, I feel like RTW 3 is easily worth the price. Especially compared to the price and quality of other games. I'm not even talking about UA:D (cough DCS, cough AAA titles). Who knew spreadsheets could be so fun?
Sad yes, but trust me. This is a good thing for the future. We might not see it right now, but Nick and others will be forced and free to start their actual own adventure. Maybe they are sad and frustrated how things turned out right now, but ultimately it will mean a great and bright future for them where they can take charge themselves instead of some corporate bottom line nitwith telling them what to do.
@@wacojones8062 I played it for over 7 years and didn't find it remotely complicated but very enjoyable for the diversity of role playing such as pvp, pve, ship crafting, component crafting, trading and my favourite, smuggling in and out of enemy ports. Sadly, all that has gone and all that is left is a boring grind.
After what GameLabs did to _Naval Action_ they don't exactly deserve to thrive. _Sea Legends_ has consistently been stated to be singleplayer-only so is no substitute for NA whoever eventually finishes it. Really hope _Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts_ can survive, though.
UA:D had great early promise, but it now doesn't know whether it wants to be realistic or a single player WoWS clone, has a terrible UI and campaign mechanics, and is also STILL buggy as shit. I hope modders will save it now they've decided to leave it alone and stop putting out mod-breaking tinker patches.
gonna be honest. gamelabs kept shooting themselves in the foot constantly so not surprising. -modding not being allowed or embraced despite their roots -naval action being a total wreak -that native american game dying -ultimate admiral suffering by the whole company being stretched too thin tbh Like i get it game development is hard. However come on. I really hope we get better games but i just don't know. This comes across that they bit off more than they could chew.
TBF there are technical reasons why they couldn't make modding easier on UA:D, and the earlier games did allow a lot easier modding. The technical reason on UA:D is basically just "their code was an absolute shitshow that barely ran even without mods" though, so that is hardly an excuse.
Given how Darthmod was just a mash up of other peoples mods that he took credit for, no he wasnt, his games are decent but his modding was based off others work
@@Arselpang some of the time, while simultaniously claiming he is the God of TW modding and throwing a hissy fit when CA dont invite him to a modders event
@@GamingPenguin4545 but that was after he publicly expressed that he was upset at the state of Empire and Rome 2, which was warranted. Not to mention the darthmod for empire and rome 2 fixed massive portions of the game CA never really fixed, and he was rewarded by being snubbed since he made CA look bad. Imo he absolutely had a reason to be pissed
Love your content THG. Thanks for the detective work. Sounds like classic business stuff: acquisition 3 years ago, integration (different quality releases), and now a restructure and refocus. A couple thoughts. Sounds like Gamelabs is not a core asset for Stillfront, so that doesn’t bode well for the future with the restructure. As for Darth and the CTO…they might also have a 3 year payout from the acquisition (common in my industry), so if they are unhappy and Gamelabs is winding down… It’s a shame. Hopefully Gamelabs spins out or it is revived by some of the principals who are leaving now and in the next 90 days.
The acquisition announcement did say they had a 3 year payback period for the founders based on performance, so very possible that explains the timing.
I feel like their ambitions combined with their past performance were what got them acquired, then they were presumably pressured to deliver upon those ambitions as soon as possible. This would explain the half-baked releases which have good core components but have serious issues behind them. Darth is one of the greats when it comes to these sorts of games, but he can't be on every project at once, and the more ambitious a project is the more time it's going to take for it to mature. If American Revolution had been released one year from now, I feel like it very well could have been one of the greatest of the decade. Even releasing six months from now would have been much better, but the push to generate positive cash flow killed that the way it's pushed the concept of early access to the fore. Dreadnoughts was sitting in early access for nearly four years. All of this combined with a more scattershot focus with FPSs and Red Dead style games being thrown under the same dev studio and it feels like as soon as they were bought they were going to be taken out behind the shed one day. Oh well.
Right, Stillfront wanted Game-Labs gone and this is what happens when corporate money/performance driven bottom line management decides over passionate developers. Nick and the others should band together and start something fresh for themselves. Never has there been a better time to do so, considering how many great one man/small team projects arrived as of late (See Manor lords). Unreal Engine allows for a faster high fidelity development more than any other time in the past. Trust me, Nick will be looking back at this eventually and realize it was a good thing. Stillfront will regret their decision eventually. Good riddance I think.
one of the devs of naval action has started a new company and both sea legends and naval action has been sold to them, the transfer of these games to the new company will happen by the end of the month so possibly darth and the others are all going to be the devs of the new company
Honestly, I kinda hope Darth/Aleks do their own thing. Naval Action and Sea Legends looks cool, but one of Game-Labs issues imho was trying to do too many things at once. Let the naval guys do their own thing, and have Darth do his own (hopefully linear warfare) thing.
Good journalism on your part going through all this information. I have a few thoughts on Game Labs I want to share generally. First, you mentioned that Game Labs is a Delaware company despite being largely based in Ukraine. This isn't of any consequence to what you're really talking about, but for anyone curious, the probable reason they are based in Delaware is because Delaware state laws for corporations are considered the most corporate-friendly in the United States. For example, Google, AT&T, Walmart, and Amazon are all legally based in Delaware despite probably having their real corporate HQ elsewhere. If sued, companies legally based in Delaware can have the suit removed to Delaware in order to benefit from the more favorable state corporate laws. Therefore, most companies/corporations in the U.S. nowadays file within Delaware unless they have a specific reason not to. Second, I think we need to keep in mind that every single historical game put out by Game Labs has had huge, glaring flaws. That all the UG series was singleplayer only meant the gameplay experience was capped to whatever could be done with the enemy AI, which wasn't that good. Naval Action had incredible potential, but GL insisted on keeping the gameplay experience chained to ridiculous and unnecessary economy and travel mechanics. UG would have been vastly more popular if it had MP and NA would actually be alive and probably a hugely successful title if it was essentially just an Age of Sail version of Warthunder/World of Tanks (e.g., no travel/economy, just hotseat battles and unlocking tiers of warships w/ some minor customization to armament and munitions). The developers were their own worst enemy based on the direction each game went in. Third, and going off my second point, I think we in the historical gaming community need to take a step back here and recognize that part of the reason we liked the UG series, NA, and other games put out by GL is because there are simply no other games out there on the subject matter. In the absence of any other food, even the most misshapen and bruised lump of steak looks delicious to a starving man. Grand Tactician: Civil War came close to being an earnest competitor, but it struggled to match the brevity and simplicity that made the UG series so charming. The bottom line here is that while I appreciate everything positive about the titles GL published, all were deeply flawed and we cut them some slack for it because... what else was there to play? Altogether, while I appreciate what GL did--and with fond memories of my many hours in UG:ACW and NA--I have to say none of this comes as any surprise. It's always easier to be the critic rather than the developer. However, there were some very basic issues with the flagship GL titles that reflected errors in judgement rather than skill deficiencies. Consequently, it's a logical conclusion for GL to be fading away when their business model insisted on producing SP-only games in the era of multiplayer streaming and communities or producing over-engineered and byzantine MP experiences when they do decide to go that route.
I’m aware of Delaware’s corporate friendly laws, but given the founders of gamelabs were all from Ukraine, and darth the lead on the ultimate General games was from Greece, and I don’t think the company had any development presence in the U.S., it seemed interesting they’d incorporate in the U.S., or they did anyway. Stillfront who bought them is based in Sweden so they’re no longer a Delaware corporation.
@ I’m not sure about this, but I think it could have been filed in DE for tax purposes. Foreign corporate taxation v. domestic given how large their U.S. sales volume was? Just spitballing.
I think the worst part is that they attempted with the "Age of Sail War Thunder" Hotseat battles, with Naval Action Legends. However, when they released it, so many of the dedicated Naval Action players were so burnt out of having to regrind the entire ship unlocks for the fourth time that they only had it online for about a month tops.
@@fusilier3029 that was always the trend with them. Do the wrong thing so many times over that it depletes the player base and exhausts the survivors, and then do the right thing and frustrate anyone left.
@thehistoricalgamer, I found this video very refreshing and informative. I would encourage you to do more "wargaming news" type videos like this as speaking for myself, I don't keep up on the latest news of the comings and goings of wargaming companies and titles.
Thanks. I enjoy doing it, there's just not a ton of news in an otherwise small niche so thats why its always kinda a side thing I do. Glad you enjoy it though! I'm thinking I'd like to do more where I can.
There is a solid engine behind all the "Ultimate general" games - I would assume that they will try and sell the engine - in an attempt to get back some of the cash invested. Maybe someone will buy it and continue to publish games based on it - we can at least dream...
This Land Is My Land is probably my favorite PC game, with excellent replayability. Prior to that I actually built my first PC to play Naval Action, but in the end it sadly turned out to be PVP grind&gank instead of grand naval battles. I've really enjoyed UA: Dreadnoughts, despite how clunky it is. All 3 titles certainly suffered through various major issues, but I played them all extensively.
My immediate thought when you started was if they were owned by a group, and indeed they were, but this for me is inevitable if an outfit is sold to a group, which are almost always run by business people and bean counters and if they're not making numbers then they're gonna get cannibalised.
It's always the same cycle. Studio underperforms, gets forced to push out games early/make corpo mandated changes because they underperform, underperform even more, repeat until corpos close studio.
I love the game too, I produce wild battlecruisers that are the most unhinged designs. I had 18 inch guns on a battlecruiser at 30,000 tons and the thing just deleted enemy ships
I came to the same conclusion as you. Between the reviews, the lack of a player base and just how poor the reviews were from their other recent games it seemed like the company / studio was struggling. The complete rushing of the game into Steam Early Access when it was barely into beta was a major red flag for me. Great video.
I think the worst of the problems came as soon as stillfront was involved Naval action went f2p and everything was changed to some arcade type of naval game, UAD was taken out of early access before the devs had finished the game.
Now I understand why Ultimate Admiral Dreadnaughts tried to push for a multiplayer when the game wasn't designed for that in the first place and was doomed to fail in that regard...
Looking for peak player numbers on Steam DB is also a decent metric, in my opinion. And it seems like AoS and AR just didn't do well and they had a tendency to abandon their games too early without ever really finishing them. Even Dreadnought seems to be still only semi-finished, especially as far as the campaign is considered. So they made games that didn't sell well, so they had to abandon them and make something new, that then also didn't sell well and people caught on to them abandoning their games before their were really finished, which led to even fewer sales on the new game and that gives you a downward spiral. Maybe going for a Napoleonic scenario would've been the smarter way. The American Revolution is in a way a very fresh and unused scenario, but it seems it is also an unused scenario for a reason.
American revolution would have been chosen to try and tap into the American markets and resonate with American gamers if it worked it would have been a major payday but sadly at this moment in time the thinking mans strategy games are being drowned out by 1st person shooters, but there's still hope one of the Devs on the naval action discord has said that they are starting a new company at the moment they have the rights to naval action and sea legends it wouldn't surprise me if Darth and a few of the others are joining them and may eventually acquire the rights to the ultimate general/admiral serries of games.
@@rosshughes7977 If anything the problem on the thematic side was Game-Labs being too American-centric. The ACW has a significant pop-cultural impact, but outside the US the AWI is an all but forgotten conflict, thus having 1.9 of your half dozen strategy games focused on that conflict was a gamble: the topic does not appeal to buyers outside the US, so you are down to US wargamers and wargamers who like their style regardless of the topic. And frankly the studio had not yet build the necessary fanbase that the latter was going to save the game's success. Then there is the lack of focus and the ambitions exceeding Game-Labs capabilities. E.g. AOS IMO would have been a better game without the land warfare part or the rapid escalation to ships of the line and UAD probably should have focused originally on Northern Europe and the North Atlantic 1890-1920 (read, the Anglo-German naval race). A tighter focus not only makes quality control easier and helps to concentrate on core featuers. In both cases it also could have provided a better long-term viability. For AoS a base game with a French and Britsh Napoleonic campaign would have allowed e.g. smaller campaign DLCs for Spain, with side theaters for France/UK (e.g. the Adriatic campaign), the US with quasi war and barbary wars or the Russian naval operations against the Ottomans in the 1820s, with a major DLC around the AWI. Similiar UAD with the above mentioned focus with France, Germany, UK, US and Russia as starting nations could easily have the Med (with Italy, AH and Ottomans) and East Asia (with Japan and China) as DLCs before even thinking about expanding the time period.
@@rosshughes7977 I'm just going to say it: These games were just not that good or engaging as strategy games on their own. The game's feel like mobile games and lack any level of graphical detail of other strategy games. Sure it's great for a mobile interface but as someone who's played strategy games my entire life I did not find them very engaging or interesting. If you removed the Historical theming from these games you have absolutely nothing. Hate to be so harsh but I was incredibly underwhelmed by the simplistic and uninteresting gameplay after hearing their games so heavily lauded. Scourge Of War is an infinitely better game when it comes to historical battles, and there are countless Grand strategy games that do the overworld map stuff better too.
@@ulrichwolfgang9136 The UA:D alpha *was* focused on the Anglo-German naval race. They definitely would have better served perfecting the Anglo-German conflict before rushing onto other features and the global map. That wasn't the only issue though, the problem is that there were at least half a dozen features they didn't properly finish before starting on the next thing.
I'm not that sure player numbers are a very useful metric for these kind of games. I know games that have been going strong with developer support for 10 years that only get 50-100 daily players.
@@nathaniellindner313 Same - the unfortunate thing too is I feel like there are so few gunpowder era games covering north american theatre from 1700s to 1815 kinda deal - it's either 7 years war in europe or american civil war, nothing of the interesting conflicts that happened across the america's for the period, so even a game about the revolution is super interesting to me, I'm sad to find out how many players are disappointed they dropped 1.0 when they did etc :(
This was great informative video. No need to apologize. I am aghast at what has happened. I am a retired vice president for a big non-profit in New York City and also a retired graduate professor. That being written... your take on these processes seems to be very accurate, IMHO. I am a historical gamer who still games often. I play all of the Darthmod inspired games like Ultimate General Civil War, Age of Sail and Ultimate General: American Revolution. I stayed away from Naval Action because of the intrigue and what I heard of a toxic community. I have been following Darthmod since his mods in Total War Empire, Napoleon and Shogun II. I also play modded (not Darthmod of course) Total War in Rome II, Attila and now Pharaoh. Losing two big heads of Game Labs, downsizing and a focusing on mobile gaming does not bode well for good historical strategy gaming at Game Labs. I was also a frequent poster on TH-cam videos that featured Ultimate General: American Revolution during very early access and I saw that many features that were being recommended by serious gronards were not being implemented. It was fun at first but became very frustrating as I saw many good ideas not being implemented. I saw the hand writing on the wall based on my previous experiences. I left those forums to see what came out. A mixed bag for sure. That was in late November. So I settled in for an announcement of major patches after release along with major mod support after the Christmas and New Years holidays. Much too my dismay on January 2nd, 2025, I see your posting instead. I am very dismayed, and it never turns out well when you are acquired by a bigger studio or publisher. Short-term you get a cash infusion long term your product becomes watered down and flawed. Mostly because of outside pressure and not having someone big understanding you are creating. Ultimately you don't make enough money for the faceless ones who don't understand your product and/or process and out the door you go. This was listed by several posters, on this entry and it is a truism. Never ever trust a buy out from a bigger entity. The founders of the acquired firm will be bought out if fortunate enough, sacked and smaller firm downsized. Often into oblivion. I hope the two big heads of Game Labs come up aces and conti ue their excellent work. 😢
They had visionary ideas, but didn't have enough grounded employees that they listened to to make those dreams something that you could build a company with. Could be an issue of company scaling and trying to do too much with stretched resources. Unfortunately visionaries need to be focused by senior management (which I was as well) otherwise they will dig graves for their company or employees. Doesn't sound like these guys were listening to anyone (reminds me of the demise of SAAB).
@morinshin I agree, my friend. They needed to be more focused on at best one new game and improving their old games. 30 employees was not enough, and they stretched themselves too thin. Their biggest mistake was in being swallowed up by a mobile company, which was far from their core business model of dedicated historical strategy games. Hopefully, they will all learn a hard lesson.
@morinshin I loved SAAB, by the way. Too innovative for their own good, coupled with poor decision-making. GAME LABS became too enamored with the visions of the heads and were not grounded enough in reality.
thanks for the news info, would not have caught this without you. A shame how it went, but decreasing sales and the quality in the current games makes this IMO a financially sensible decision. Wish the best for all the developers…
Sad news from a studio whose games I really enjoyed. I was really looking forward to UGAR because I'm interested in the period and it's totally under-represented in gaming. UGCV was a blast and I consider it one of my favorite wargames of all time - so easy to play, so difficult to master. UGAR got off to a really rocky start in apparently *very* early access and so I held off buying it until they shaped it up more (more features, fewer bugs, better balance). I'm truly bummed out that the game may never really be polished into the great product it should be.
One of my favorite wargames for sure. Really easy to play, really difficult to master. I was incredibly interested in UGAR when they got some patches to smooth things out.
It’s always felt to me as though a lot of their games have succeeded in spite of studio decisions rather than because of them. They make games that appeal to a lot of us and the good will and hard work of the community is what takes them forward, often by undoing or tweaking changes made by the devs. Great ideas fairly well executed then abandoned for the next shiny thing.
@@mdstmouse7I not a 100% sure but it felt like they had a group of testers in the community they listened to and ignored everyone else and they just drove the game into the ground and when they got called out on problems they started banning people
@@zigzera7757 haha i asked on the naval action reddit page what happened to instant action and got downvoted into oblivion. there was no reason both modes couldnt have existed.
@@mdstmouse7basically they made the game for PvP resources were locked to certain ports in which your nation had to own in order to build ships that were needed to take port and actually play in PvP or the nation vs nation. So if your company or nation didn’t owe anything you could do anything. Then there was the port battles that happened at certain times. So if the Europeans made a port battle happen when all the US was asleep that port was a freebie. Then they started wiping servers. And anytime anyone complained on there forums they were banned deleted. Then they started to sell DLC paint then ships and the ships can get whatever build you choose and you get one per day so you can effectively have unlimited ships while the economy was built around building ships for your nation so if you didn’t buy DLC ships you effectively can’t PvP.
honestly, it was all their Wrongdoing that brought us here, very sad to see but after that disaster of naval action and that missed opportunity of UAD it is what it is, age of sail naval battles were fantastic tho
Really great analysis, and interesting news. I enjoyed Gettysburg and have a number of the UG and UA games - some do seem to be under-baked, mixed reviews, like you say, and UG American Revolution seemed to be in Early Access too long. Didn't get the attention it deserved. A lot of Total War fans saw this team as perhaps a new dawn for the historical strategy genre, but this just goes to show again that major publishers do not see the genre as having a big enough market.
Had debated spending some Christmas money on UG: American Revolution. I think I'll hold off for the moment to see how the dust settles - if they're not going to further develop/support UG:AR, I'm not buying it. Wargames generally aren't big sellers, but Game-Labs also hurt themselves - the lack of proper tutorials in UAD was an egregious oversight IMO. Shame, because the games I had bought - UG:CW and UAD - were great games once you figure out how to play them.
I guess Stealth17 and BrotherMunro have pretty much moved on to Sea Power, so they'll still have plenty of content to release. Many thanks to The Historical Gamer for breaking this story - yeah a long video but it kinda needed to be to explain what was going on. You have potential as a real journalist on the videogame development front.
After the multiplayer DLC debacle with UA:D and how the devs lashed out at the well-deserved criticism they got for it, I'm not really surprised that Game Labs might be a sinking ship. To be brutally honest, I think UG:CW was their only good game. All the others were decent looking starts that they fumbled and abandoned.
Trust me, if so many people that are higher up and know eachother well from better times are leaving or forced to leave, we will see much better things from them in the future. Nick's days will only become brighter from here.
This is sad news. Naval Action and Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail were my first introductions to the devs and I loved what they were trying to do, and I still have UG and UA:D on my wishlist (even with sales, times are a bit tough, cant justify buying new games quite yet). I really hope for the best, but this isnt looking good. Thanks for covering this news, not a peep about this anywhere else I lurk.
Dreadnoughts is still an unfinished, bug ridden game after what now? 4-5 years of development? As a customer I'm tired of all their mini patches and bugfixes only to find a product that is still infested with bad AI, unfinished stuff, bugs and errors. Not a huge loss to me, I'm definitely not a satisfied customer regarding UA Dreadnoughts. Promise and reality are diverging massively from one another, almost CA/ Total War style.
They never even implemented the most basic mechanic of a naval game: ship steering that works. It actually got worse as development went on. Oh, and I was banned from the steam forum for complaining about it.
"Could've been a 5 minute video..." LOL No it couldn't. XP Are you kidding? That was wall to wall with content. Thank you for the well structured breakdown. You make it look easy. I remember collabing with Nick on hobby modding stuff way back in our TWCenter days. I hope he's in a safe situation and that we may hope to see more from him in a new venture.
Well, life goes on. That's the way it's always been. None of this is good or bad. I really enjoyed the Gettysburg and Civil War games. I'm still mad about the complete mess that UA:D turned out to be. That game wasted so much potential. Whatever comes next, it's what it is. Let's hope, there are still some talented developers out there interested in strategy games.
That you can get 30k views on a 30 minute video examining the death of a minor game studio says thet this niche has a solid fan base. And that you're primary content creator for it. Keep it up. Great video. Sorry to see the death of rhe studio though.
As someone who interacted with Game Labs almost exclusively through the development of Naval Action, I honestly have mixed feelings about this. I've played some of the UG games, and they are absolutely great games. However, I *experienced* Game Labs through the forums for Naval Action. From the very beginning of development, the NA side of GL was wildly different from UG (I even remember the UG forums being under the NA ones, and distinctly remember seeing the Darth pfp, the only other red-letter admin account aside from the NA "admin" account). There's a saying thrown around NA groups: Game-Labs doesn't do bad customer service; it's non-existent. From the very beginning the NA admins were neglectful if not outright belligerent when it came to its players (see the "you are playing *my* game" discord quote), from day 1. Every change was catered to the those players that were the loudest complainers and biggest payers. Any dissenting voices were banned. Negative reviews were met with lock outs from devs. The whole thing is bittersweet for me; Naval Action had such potential, and was wasted.
Try ultimate admiral starts in the colonies until revolution then you go to europe saving loyalists and such trying to stop the revolution. Not much cav tho sadly since your navy
I think that it also doesn't help to win customer confidence when they release their games and quickly drop it to move on to the next. Very little QoL improvements and polish can scare some people away.
What a shame. The one studio giving Creative Assembly a run for its money. I could never get into the Ultimate General: Civil War, but they seemed to be developing something new and fresh in every title.
Well, as soon as the final patch for UA:D comes up I'll start playing it, what with no tinkering about to effect game breaking things in sight then. The early access boom and bust was brutal. There are scant few games I buy in EA state because I have no desire to become unpaid beta tester(, because of the big EA) and the few EA games I do buy are either games I know I will play for a long time, or were on their last legs of early access discount before "going gold" and either were discarded a month after buying or stay in active roster until I join the majority as Romans would phrase it. Shame for the dev though.
I think this explains why UG :AR was pushed to release. Gets it out of early access and officially launched to try and generate sales. Resl bummer as i loved ultimate general gettysburg and civil war. I just started a new campaign in American revolution. I wish darth and the others well. I hope they land on their feet and keep making games.
Sad news indeed, unforutnately a large amount of the time this is what happens when something is bought by a larger company. Hoping for the best though, as I personally have had great memories on UA: Dreadnoughts and I know that you all have had great times on the UA and UG games.
Well I guess there goes my dream of getting a good Napoleonic era game from them. Personally think more people would have bought into that over the American revolution as the Napoleonic wars are more well known than the AR. It's too bad because I fell in love with game labs because of ugcw. It's still one of my favorite single player strategy games even with its minor faults. That game really brought me back to Sid miers Gettysburg which I play a metric ton of as a kid. But only the graphics were better, the maps much larger and God damn is the AI really good in that game. Only strategy game I own that has an AI capable of making me feel like I'm fighting another person. But honestly after ugcw you could see the slow decline in quality of their games. Ultimate admiral age of sail was an alright game with great ideas behind it but was a huge let down for me in comparison to ugcw especially when it came to land battles. Dreadnaughts always looked great to me but I never bought it because the UI looked too messy and everyone was always complaining about bugs that to this day have gone unaddressed. I had high hopes for American revolution. And it still interests me but I'm terribly put of from purchasing it because people say in reviews that it feels very unfinished even in 1.0 but mostly for me the price tag is what killed it for me. Had UGAR been 30 or 35 bucks USD like their previous titles I probably more than likely would have bought it. Now I don't know I'll ever buy it or if they are going under if it will even be available on steam any more along with all their other titles. Which is too bad because I feel like UGAR just needed some time in the oven much like UGCW had after it's 1.0 release. It really is too bad. Game labs was for a long time on my radar as my favorite digital wargame company. Definitely sad times. But I do hope the two guys leaving find another publisher that will work with them in their vision for the kind of games they want to make and wish them all the best in their future endeavours.
I wouldn't give up on a Napoleon game. Its very possible they go off and start their own studio. The irony of wanting a Napoleonic game, is Sid Meier wanted to do Waterloo after Antietam. But Antietam kinda flopping a bit due to them trying to do a digital distribution strategy, and then their publisher EA pressuring them to do something other than a wargame, caused Sid to sell the Gettysburg game engine to Break Away Games (who then made Waterloo: Napoleon's Last battle) and Sid ended up doing Alpha Centari instead... so if it wasn't for EA, we would have had Sid Meier's Waterloo.
I mean I kept my eyes on UA:D for possible purchase for years, but it never really got to the point where it finally seemed "finished" enough for me to be willing to pay for it before it started seemingly ignoring improving core features in favor of rushing things out like the campaign mode and the multiplayer thing that no one seemingly wanted or was interested in.
I'm a little sad - UGCW is one of my favorite games of all time - but I wish Nick the best and I hope he's able to land somewhere or start something that can make the games he clearly loves.
Not entirely suprised. Gettysburg and Civil War where both amazing games I still play from time to time. Age of Sale was ok, but didn't have the same replayability for me. I refunded Dreadnoughts alf way through the terrible tutorial. I was really excited for Revolution but watching let's plays I didn't think it was going to be for me. I hope Darth has the oppotunity to make more smaller, polished games like Gettysburg, if he does, I'll be buying them.
I'm not sure I wanted multiplayer honestly, but if they had added multiplayer and maybe a operational campaign where you move armies around like Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg campaign, to test out the real time campaign mechanics without going full total war, that might have been a nice sequel/middle ground to hit multiple types of players.
Low performing is code now for, games we can't put monetisation in. And the problem with looking at reviews of historical games is, historical gamers are extremely picky. If you have one thing out of place the game is deemed crap.
untill people force the historical gamers to swollow there pickness or shame them for it hard enough that they drop enough standards then things would change.
@@TheManofthecross then the genre stops being historical games and becomes Fortnite in a vaguely-historical setting with slightly-historically-inspired skins.
3 that we know of, I think it’s safe to assume there’s more, given they’re also selling off one of their in development games, and they rapidly are ending further development on two recently launched games.
Good video, informative. Thanks. I wonder if the original GameLabs employees might perhaps go to something like Triassic games. Stillfront and their business model is simply not a good fit for wargame developers.
This all reminds me of the nonsense with Hasbro-Wizards of the Coast-Larian and why Larian won't be doing BG4 - because Hasbro was so awful to deal with. Also, how CA ruined the Total War franchise and the ensuing banning of posts on steam about their said stupidity last fall-because they let Marketing people run their game development and never fixed the base game engine. More historically it heavily reminds me of naval scholar Dr. Alexander Clarke's comments on ongoing pattern of the British Ministry of Finance understanding cost, but not value - which lead to bad decisions that had direct impact on Great Britain's preparedness for WW2. The MBA jargon in the Stillfront's press releases says it all - all jargon and ideology and no thought. The stupidity is strong in these ones. UA: AoS remains perhaps my perhaps favorite of all time, so repayable. UA: American Revolution does things in an accessible way that even Matrix Games should envy, or any other hard core wargame of the old school - - the logistics rules are way out in front. Just hope these games remain serviceable through Steam. I'd argue that UA: American Revolution is what the Total War series should have become. Hope Manor Lords doesn't suffer a similar fate. The Great Northern War of 2024-2025. Swedish Imperialism is back again. Thanks for the update though.
Exactly. This is how it often goes and no I think Manor Lords is in decent hands with their publisher. They are focussed on bringing low cost high potential interesting games to the market. They have way more passion for this genre, but Stillfront never had. We will look back onto this eventually as a good thing. It sets Nick and the others free to start a new chapter and let their passion drive them. Also, a company run without passion for what they sell doesn't work. I cannot judge their passion for shallow mobile stuff, but hardcore strategy wasn't one of them. This is for the best.
@@tycondero1647 Interesting to note that Nick turned down a CA job offer as I understand it, 10 years + ago (?), so he's a veteran of these experiences. My standard axiom for games now is - I want them conceived, designed, and developed in Eastern Europe - seems like the smartest folks out there. Then when they are made I'm looking for a Dutchman that does comprehensive discussions and tutorial - and of course TactiCat and Strat for ManorLords. PatmosIV for Ostriv. Stealth17 for UA series, especially Dreadnaughts. Larian opened up a brand new studio in Poland to work on their next games BTW.
@@KG-1 "Interesting to note that Nick turned down a CA job offer as I understand it, 10 years + ago", no what happened was he said he couldn't go to a modding summit, didn't get invited as a result, and then threw a hissy fit and rage quit TW modding (meaning, him compiling other people's mods).
As a diehard fan of UG: Civil War and UG: Age of Sail, my bullshit alarms were ringing all over UG: American Revolution. Part of me wanted to take a leap of faith, but the poor state of their more recent releases were huge red flags. Its sad, but I'm glad I held off on buying early access.
There are so many titles being dropped these days. Thousands of new games ever year. Maybe even tens of thousands by now. It's very difficult, even if you truly have a great game, to hit with the right crowd.
if i understood it right , on the discord , Naval Action is being transferred to a new company . new server setup etc. patches etc. i do the think the same is with sea legends . all of us NA nerds always hit on Zasov , as being the guy why Na hasn't evolved the way it should , i do not agree with that at all . I think the guy is a straight forward dude and think that's awesome and the prime reason why NA was was done at all. I'd presume , and this is strictly theory, that the main guys are going to do their own thing to together and took NA and Sea Legends with them . I'd think the parent company didn't want to let the UG series go , because you can port that pretty good to mobile gaming . just my 2 cents and sorry bout the reference to Naval Action but that was the first game i got into contact with Admin and as much as everyone keeps goin on how bad it is , it's kinda funny everyone keeps coming back to see how the game is . The vid was an awesome job excellent work 👍
Gettysburg was my first foray into game labs. I loved that game, but it was small in scope very complex with poor explanation. Naval Action was a dream game for me, I was in it since the start. It was so promising and could have been great. But poor development and changing game engines made it a flop. It is still fun to play and has great parts, but fails to deliver. I think UA Dreadnoughts is similar in that sense. The building mechanics are outstanding, and if that is your thing, then great. But the poor AI, poor AI auto build system, and campaign system leave much to be desired. Especially if you are coming from UG Gettysburg or civil war. Compared to their previous games, their latest can be a let down. But only because we know they can do better. All of their games I've played are worth it though. They are only studio where I own almost all of their games, and I will buy the others eventually. I will be sad to see them go, I hope their talent can find work elsewhere making games we want to play.
So the game will only get one patch?. It had a lot of potential. Why are they doing it so early? I wanted to buy the game, but if they refuse to improve the game, I don't know :(. I still miss drummers, flag bearers and commanders in battles...
GL model of gamemaking was always make a game give little support, abandon it move on to make another game, repeat. That was never sustainable especially since beyond gettysburg and civil war their games were not that great plus those are niche titles. In general GL is done.
No please i just got dreadnoughts and it was getting so many little updates...plz no :( i love that studio, such easy to learn games that scratched a niche for me
I really liked this investigation! I don't have much to loose with the company going down, I hate to see any game company get shut down, or put into skeleton mode. But looking at comments and the games, they seemed to kind of... miss the boat? If they put more focus in the Ultimate General/Total War style games, I think maybe numbers could have been better? But I've never seen anyone really talk about Dreadnaughts outside of it being bad, or having a ton of problems.
I think you are right Historical gamer. Ever since game-labs was sold to Stlllfront did we fear of this day and scenario. Actually from a product perspective the acquisition never made sense. Stillfront is mostly in the casual mobile stuff (wouldn't call it games from my perfective, but I am a PC master race guy 😅). It made no sense that they were dipping their toes into hard core strategy gaming. In a way, years from now, this is a good thing. Nick and the others will probably band together and start a new adventure of a new studio (I hope), free of money and performance driven corporate interference. Stillfront never showed much love so perhaps good riddance. Everything always has a silver lining. Perhaps now, Nick will be able to start to work on a actual total war competitor. He has enough experience and profile to attempt this IMO. Look at what Manor Lords' single developer managed in this day and age and Nick has far more experience than he has. Everything will be for the better eventually. 🎉
@@thehistoricalgamer Ok, then. That's interesting because I remember lots of talk about him working on it when it was in development, but if he says he didn't work on it, then that's that.
Silly comment perhaps, but CD Project RED isn't located in Eastern Europe (I'd say Poland is Central Europe but that's besides the point) because it's cheaper there, but because it's a Polish studio founded by Polish people who lived and worked in Warsaw. While it's true that big developers and publishers like to open satellite studios in countries where the cost of living is more bearable, there are also studios in those places that are opened because, y'know, actual people live and work there? :) And CDPR has also done the opposite, they've opened up shops in more expensive parts of the world, namely in the Boston and Vancouver areas. The argument the opening of such studios is often then to be able to access the talent available in those areas. Either way, yeah, this definitely the end of Game Labs as a developer of strategy games. It's a sad development indeed. At the very least, I hope American Revolution gets polished a bit further, and I hope the leading strategy devs find a new home and are able to continue working on good games.
I struggle to find an instance where a developer being acquired by a conglomerate ever turned out well for the developer.
I’m sure the owners and shareholders did very well!
Broken arrow
@@JMww2 lol broken arrow is a game not a company. and its not even out yet.
I's not that simple. In many cases just after being acquired developer has a window to release a good game with bigger budget than it was planned. And then corporate managers are invading production and making the next a waste.
Like Bulfrog before EA released Magic Carpet, Syndicate and High Octane, nobody is remembering now. And just after contract with EA they released Dungeon keeper - a legend predisestor of Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld and many more smaller game. Of some of Minecraft systems too.
Even in the same ganre, Popoluos was much less developed than Dungeon Keeper.
But after they they released Dungeon keeper 2, with much lower quality, some more siquels and were disbanded. By rumors exactly because of corporate "optimisation" of spending.
So there is a window of opportunity. But it rarely makes for long.
@@iamaim2847 In my experience any independent dev that gets bought out by a publisher will get one, two MAX good games out before the new owners destroy the publisher in order to make more profit.
>sells company to have more resources to make better products
>eats shit and dies
Every single time.
Yeah, big corporations always end up killing the studios they own.
Was it Stillfront fault thou? Their games after Civil War were getting worse and worse, its even hard to say, that they were rushed to release, as they have been in development hell for eternity. Civil War was great, but it may as well have been a fluke, its not like they had a rich history of producing many interesting games. Gettysburg was like a proof of concept, and Civil War an actual game, after that they tried to do naval stuff and failed miserably, then they tried to do Civil War but bigger and better, and they havent made any progress for like 2 years. Maybe Russians being dickheads are to blame for studio makeing worse games after the war has started, its hard to say.
I'd argue Age of Sail was good, but it was more niche than CW or Gettysburg, I also realize slow naval combat is not for everyone, but as someone who grew up playing Talonsoft's Age of Sail 2, I really enjoyed it. I also think Gettysburg was good, I don't think it was a proof of concept so much as a barebones game from a team that didn't have a lotta resources yet. CW being better than Gettysburg was almost certainly due to Gettysburg being successful and bankrolling CW.
My main issue with Stillfront is it seemed like a dubious strategy to acquire GameLabs in the first place. It never made sense to me unless they were planning to really invest in PC gaming, because they were a mobile centric group. If they were trying to really dig into PC gaming, the other actions by the company didn't make that obvious.
@@cezarysieczka7012 I totally agree, for me, the pinnacle of their games was indeed UG:CW. I still play it occasionally, it's my most played game on Steam with over 2k hours invested in it. Like you, IMHO after CW everything was downhill. So at least we now know why UG:AR jumped from v0.6 to(not finished)full release v1.0 lol.
@@thehistoricalgamer Hey man, having had this discussion over on Hetman's server, (we saw this about the same time and came to the unsavory conclusion that-there was going to be an unsavory conclusion...) I would just like to volunteer this.
I was a moderator over on CA's official boards for years, years ago. When Sega forced its way into that studio, some of the emphasis was in fact to convert some CA gameconcepts and gamestyles over to mobile. This has been done. While not all of it has been successful, some of it has. While the mergers were not the same at all, and Sega certainly had the PC objective in mind, and other things as well (movie IPs, over-arching utility of mocap, etc), there _was_ that mobile focus too.
It may be that the mobile conversion was a hoped-for result based on their observation of Sega, and a hoped-for springboard into PC gaming was a step too far. With nothing hitting the mark as you have suggested in the PC world, nor anything sufficiently popular to fuel a mobile conversion, maybe even a lack of the technical muscle (or possibly will) to make the mobile hurdle, the acquisition has garnered the attention of the choppers. I am just saying it is quite possible that StillFront essentially viewed the studio as possibly just a means of furthering its core business to begin with, and the PC angle was just a hopeful daydream offered by whoever thought the buyout was a good idea anyway (which very well could have come from the GL side).
Still, nice work and appreciated your looking around on this for more data points. ~Dim
Having dealt with both UAD and NA, and keeping an eye on the Steam Community Forums for both, I'm laying a good portion of the blame at the feet of the devs as well.
The devs made it quite clear thru various posts on the forums, that they were developing the games that THEY wanted to play, and that frankly, they didn't give a hairy rat's rear end what their player base and potential customers had to say - unless it was unqualified praise of their absolute genius.
As an example, in UAD, after the hot mess that was the multiplayer DLC, many asked on the forums why they'd tried to turn UAD into a multiplayer game, instead of making a Co-op mode that many people had already asked for. The reply, from Nick himself, was "we (the devs) don't play co-op games, we're not interested in co-op games, we hate games with co-op modes - therefore there will never be a co-op mode in UAD".
In short, they told their customers, flat out, "we're making the game that WE want, take it or leave it".
And that's before you even get into the multitude of other issues, that UAD has had since first being offered six-plus years ago, as an early access game straight from Game Labs, and have never been adequately addressed.
I do think theres something to say about sticking to your creative chops, too many games bend to the will of their community for the worse... But that requires good judgement and thats not what im seeing here 😂
Pretty much this. Been a long term player of UAD since it was in pre-release and the game that was promised is absolutely not the game that we got as a "released" game. The laughable MP DLC release was the signal that the game was basically on its last legs financially.
The core of UA:D (building big ships to shoot at other big ships) was a good game, a gem. Once Game Labs tried to go beyond that core, they were clueless ... which has been a common pattern for them. The engine was limited to single core processing, so never truly scalable. The shipbuilding AI was primitive. The battle AI and campaign management AI weren't any better. The campaign was never properly developed into a semi-realistic and enjoyable experience that would truly support that core game. So, the devs fiddled with armor-piercing mechanics, new hulls, and bug "fixes" in six years of updates.
Hopefully, this title could get sold to a studio focused on technical competence & scalability, that will redo the AGI and campaign mechanics from scratch for a UA:D2 ... but I won't hold my breath waiting.
Every developer decision and "balancing" change made in the last two years to UAD has been disastrous. Every change makes things worse, the problems don't get fixed, and the alleged fixes don't actually fix anything while creating new problems. Highly requested features get either rudely and bluntly denied, or they say " yeah we'll do that" and then proceed to never actually do it (selectable gun models, anyone?). I don't know if it was Nick or a different dev but whoever was the one making all the dev posts was very combative and rude every time anyone had anything to say that wasn't falling all over themselves with praise.
Naval Action started out great until they started cheesing it too much. When the AI started being able to turn on a dime faster than you could sail at your best point of wind and keep guns on you at all times plus make 30 knots in their 1st rate ships of the line, and when they started threatening to shut down the more popular PvE server because they wanted to force everyone into PvP (until all the PvE players threatened to demand refunds and review bomb them if they did, so they backed down), and when they absolutely destroyed trading and crafting mechanics and then started allowing clans to own and control ports which marginalized small clans or independent players...that's when that game died. Once upon a time it was the best option for Age of Sail games, but they destroyed that by dumbing it down and making it too arcade-y.
I find myself disagreeing with The Historical Gamer's closing sentiments about it being sad to see this company die. I think it needed to. Violently. In fire. Hopefully modders can save UA:D now that there's not going to be a new mod-breaking patch every two days and hopefully the new management can save Sea Legends from what Game Labs would have done to it on the current trajectory they as a company were on.
Also patches came when they felt working on them, and not on a regular schedule. Game got abandoned for months, and than they started suddenly working on it. And when the patches came, they did it on the fly. Trial and error. So when they patched the game there were initially more bugs afterwards than before. They usually made a "Beta-Patch"-version for larger updates, but that test phase was just a week or two. And than they rolled out the patch anyway, despite having created new and obvious issues. Than you got daily new bugfixes, and this messed every time with mods.
Hard to loose the dream of UG: Napoleonic Wars..
Yeah... :(
It’s always possible Darth and other gamelab alums found a new studio and make their version of that.
Same here. If not this, I hope at least Grand Tactician makes the elusive Napoleonic wargame.
I suspect we're eventually going to see a grand-scale and historically decent Napoleonic strategy game within the next five-ish years. Whole generations of developers have been raised on NTW, ETW, UG:ACW, Holdfast, Mount and Blade: NW, and other games in that era. Keep the faith.
honestly tho if American Revolution has been any indication I'm not sure GameLabs could ever live up to our dreams
It sucks unfortunately this type of game is a very niche product and a mobile developer will always be the wrong company to manage this type of product.
Sad news if this is it. I have gotten 800 hours out of UA Dreadnaughts and am thankful for what the modders are doing with the game. For fans of the other games I hope that their games get taken care of as well.
same i just bought it last month after reading a book about the battle of tsushima
Modders need to be able to add more parts and hulls to the game though. Some factions are really lacking in unique stuff.
Yeah... And I bought UAD as I kinda got fed up with rule the waves series development and RTW 2 free update turning into to a DLC and eventually being released as a "new" game that's just the same game as the previous two in the series with some changes here and there, still looking, feeling and operating like an excel sheet from 90's... And increased price while being released under a publisher without much reason to get a publisher...
Both RTW and UAD have their strong points and weaknesses...
But I don't have much hope for either anymore. Should've guessed from the absolute shitshow from what the UAD multiplayer overpriced DLC was. Lucky I didn't buy it.
@@AssassinAgent IDK man, I feel like RTW 3 is easily worth the price. Especially compared to the price and quality of other games. I'm not even talking about UA:D (cough DCS, cough AAA titles). Who knew spreadsheets could be so fun?
Sad yes, but trust me. This is a good thing for the future. We might not see it right now, but Nick and others will be forced and free to start their actual own adventure. Maybe they are sad and frustrated how things turned out right now, but ultimately it will mean a great and bright future for them where they can take charge themselves instead of some corporate bottom line nitwith telling them what to do.
Saw what happened to Naval Action, originally a great game but reduced through ridiculous changes that wiped out the player base.
I tried it for a week and found too complicated after playing mostly playing first person games.
@@wacojones8062 I played it for over 7 years and didn't find it remotely complicated but very enjoyable for the diversity of role playing such as pvp, pve, ship crafting, component crafting, trading and my favourite, smuggling in and out of enemy ports. Sadly, all that has gone and all that is left is a boring grind.
After what GameLabs did to _Naval Action_ they don't exactly deserve to thrive.
_Sea Legends_ has consistently been stated to be singleplayer-only so is no substitute for NA whoever eventually finishes it.
Really hope _Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts_ can survive, though.
Nope, last update today :^)
UA:D had great early promise, but it now doesn't know whether it wants to be realistic or a single player WoWS clone, has a terrible UI and campaign mechanics, and is also STILL buggy as shit. I hope modders will save it now they've decided to leave it alone and stop putting out mod-breaking tinker patches.
This is a huge hit because UG Civil War is one of my Favorite games and iv had hundreds of hours into it.
Same. That game is probably one of my all time favorite strategy games.
Over 2k hours in CW for me
@@jeff-p8l do you run any mods?
@@JD96893Where are the nods for American Civil War?
@@jeff-p8lDo you know of any mods for American Civil War.
gonna be honest. gamelabs kept shooting themselves in the foot constantly so not surprising.
-modding not being allowed or embraced despite their roots
-naval action being a total wreak
-that native american game dying
-ultimate admiral suffering by the whole company being stretched too thin tbh
Like i get it game development is hard. However come on.
I really hope we get better games but i just don't know. This comes across that they bit off more than they could chew.
TBF there are technical reasons why they couldn't make modding easier on UA:D, and the earlier games did allow a lot easier modding. The technical reason on UA:D is basically just "their code was an absolute shitshow that barely ran even without mods" though, so that is hardly an excuse.
The OG Darth Vader is the creator of the greatest modders of all time. Creating Darth mod back 2010. It was number one on steam for like a decade
Given how Darthmod was just a mash up of other peoples mods that he took credit for, no he wasnt, his games are decent but his modding was based off others work
Love Darth mod, made empires a playable game! Wonderful modder .
@@GamingPenguin4545 Which he gives credit for.
@@Arselpang some of the time, while simultaniously claiming he is the God of TW modding and throwing a hissy fit when CA dont invite him to a modders event
@@GamingPenguin4545 but that was after he publicly expressed that he was upset at the state of Empire and Rome 2, which was warranted. Not to mention the darthmod for empire and rome 2 fixed massive portions of the game CA never really fixed, and he was rewarded by being snubbed since he made CA look bad. Imo he absolutely had a reason to be pissed
Love your content THG. Thanks for the detective work.
Sounds like classic business stuff: acquisition 3 years ago, integration (different quality releases), and now a restructure and refocus.
A couple thoughts. Sounds like Gamelabs is not a core asset for Stillfront, so that doesn’t bode well for the future with the restructure. As for Darth and the CTO…they might also have a 3 year payout from the acquisition (common in my industry), so if they are unhappy and Gamelabs is winding down…
It’s a shame. Hopefully Gamelabs spins out or it is revived by some of the principals who are leaving now and in the next 90 days.
The acquisition announcement did say they had a 3 year payback period for the founders based on performance, so very possible that explains the timing.
I found your channel through UG:CW, and I definitely felt like there was a lot of work and care put into this video, well done
I feel like their ambitions combined with their past performance were what got them acquired, then they were presumably pressured to deliver upon those ambitions as soon as possible. This would explain the half-baked releases which have good core components but have serious issues behind them. Darth is one of the greats when it comes to these sorts of games, but he can't be on every project at once, and the more ambitious a project is the more time it's going to take for it to mature. If American Revolution had been released one year from now, I feel like it very well could have been one of the greatest of the decade. Even releasing six months from now would have been much better, but the push to generate positive cash flow killed that the way it's pushed the concept of early access to the fore. Dreadnoughts was sitting in early access for nearly four years. All of this combined with a more scattershot focus with FPSs and Red Dead style games being thrown under the same dev studio and it feels like as soon as they were bought they were going to be taken out behind the shed one day. Oh well.
Right, Stillfront wanted Game-Labs gone and this is what happens when corporate money/performance driven bottom line management decides over passionate developers. Nick and the others should band together and start something fresh for themselves. Never has there been a better time to do so, considering how many great one man/small team projects arrived as of late (See Manor lords). Unreal Engine allows for a faster high fidelity development more than any other time in the past.
Trust me, Nick will be looking back at this eventually and realize it was a good thing. Stillfront will regret their decision eventually. Good riddance I think.
one of the devs of naval action has started a new company and both sea legends and naval action has been sold to them, the transfer of these games to the new company will happen by the end of the month so possibly darth and the others are all going to be the devs of the new company
Honestly, I kinda hope Darth/Aleks do their own thing. Naval Action and Sea Legends looks cool, but one of Game-Labs issues imho was trying to do too many things at once. Let the naval guys do their own thing, and have Darth do his own (hopefully linear warfare) thing.
Darth is part of the problem too.
Good journalism on your part going through all this information. I have a few thoughts on Game Labs I want to share generally.
First, you mentioned that Game Labs is a Delaware company despite being largely based in Ukraine. This isn't of any consequence to what you're really talking about, but for anyone curious, the probable reason they are based in Delaware is because Delaware state laws for corporations are considered the most corporate-friendly in the United States. For example, Google, AT&T, Walmart, and Amazon are all legally based in Delaware despite probably having their real corporate HQ elsewhere. If sued, companies legally based in Delaware can have the suit removed to Delaware in order to benefit from the more favorable state corporate laws. Therefore, most companies/corporations in the U.S. nowadays file within Delaware unless they have a specific reason not to.
Second, I think we need to keep in mind that every single historical game put out by Game Labs has had huge, glaring flaws. That all the UG series was singleplayer only meant the gameplay experience was capped to whatever could be done with the enemy AI, which wasn't that good. Naval Action had incredible potential, but GL insisted on keeping the gameplay experience chained to ridiculous and unnecessary economy and travel mechanics. UG would have been vastly more popular if it had MP and NA would actually be alive and probably a hugely successful title if it was essentially just an Age of Sail version of Warthunder/World of Tanks (e.g., no travel/economy, just hotseat battles and unlocking tiers of warships w/ some minor customization to armament and munitions). The developers were their own worst enemy based on the direction each game went in.
Third, and going off my second point, I think we in the historical gaming community need to take a step back here and recognize that part of the reason we liked the UG series, NA, and other games put out by GL is because there are simply no other games out there on the subject matter. In the absence of any other food, even the most misshapen and bruised lump of steak looks delicious to a starving man. Grand Tactician: Civil War came close to being an earnest competitor, but it struggled to match the brevity and simplicity that made the UG series so charming. The bottom line here is that while I appreciate everything positive about the titles GL published, all were deeply flawed and we cut them some slack for it because... what else was there to play?
Altogether, while I appreciate what GL did--and with fond memories of my many hours in UG:ACW and NA--I have to say none of this comes as any surprise. It's always easier to be the critic rather than the developer. However, there were some very basic issues with the flagship GL titles that reflected errors in judgement rather than skill deficiencies. Consequently, it's a logical conclusion for GL to be fading away when their business model insisted on producing SP-only games in the era of multiplayer streaming and communities or producing over-engineered and byzantine MP experiences when they do decide to go that route.
I’m aware of Delaware’s corporate friendly laws, but given the founders of gamelabs were all from Ukraine, and darth the lead on the ultimate General games was from Greece, and I don’t think the company had any development presence in the U.S., it seemed interesting they’d incorporate in the U.S., or they did anyway. Stillfront who bought them is based in Sweden so they’re no longer a Delaware corporation.
@ I’m not sure about this, but I think it could have been filed in DE for tax purposes. Foreign corporate taxation v. domestic given how large their U.S. sales volume was? Just spitballing.
I think the worst part is that they attempted with the "Age of Sail War Thunder" Hotseat battles, with Naval Action Legends. However, when they released it, so many of the dedicated Naval Action players were so burnt out of having to regrind the entire ship unlocks for the fourth time that they only had it online for about a month tops.
@@fusilier3029 that was always the trend with them. Do the wrong thing so many times over that it depletes the player base and exhausts the survivors, and then do the right thing and frustrate anyone left.
Ask mr Musk how Delaware worked out for him...
@thehistoricalgamer, I found this video very refreshing and informative. I would encourage you to do more "wargaming news" type videos like this as speaking for myself, I don't keep up on the latest news of the comings and goings of wargaming companies and titles.
Thanks. I enjoy doing it, there's just not a ton of news in an otherwise small niche so thats why its always kinda a side thing I do. Glad you enjoy it though! I'm thinking I'd like to do more where I can.
There is a solid engine behind all the "Ultimate general" games - I would assume that they will try and sell the engine - in an attempt to get back some of the cash invested. Maybe someone will buy it and continue to publish games based on it - we can at least dream...
This Land Is My Land is probably my favorite PC game, with excellent replayability.
Prior to that I actually built my first PC to play Naval Action, but in the end it sadly turned out to be PVP grind&gank instead of grand naval battles.
I've really enjoyed UA: Dreadnoughts, despite how clunky it is.
All 3 titles certainly suffered through various major issues, but I played them all extensively.
My immediate thought when you started was if they were owned by a group, and indeed they were, but this for me is inevitable if an outfit is sold to a group, which are almost always run by business people and bean counters and if they're not making numbers then they're gonna get cannibalised.
It's always the same cycle.
Studio underperforms, gets forced to push out games early/make corpo mandated changes because they underperform, underperform even more, repeat until corpos close studio.
At least we got plenty of unique hulls in Dreadnoughts. I love that game more than the other titles.
Yeah, but I can’t play it because of how unreliable torpedoes are. They’re bugged to hell.
@@Commander_Rockwelltorpedoes from which era? They work quite well for me
I love the game too, I produce wild battlecruisers that are the most unhinged designs. I had 18 inch guns on a battlecruiser at 30,000 tons and the thing just deleted enemy ships
I came to the same conclusion as you. Between the reviews, the lack of a player base and just how poor the reviews were from their other recent games it seemed like the company / studio was struggling. The complete rushing of the game into Steam Early Access when it was barely into beta was a major red flag for me. Great video.
I think the worst of the problems came as soon as stillfront was involved Naval action went f2p and everything was changed to some arcade type of naval game, UAD was taken out of early access before the devs had finished the game.
Now I understand why Ultimate Admiral Dreadnaughts tried to push for a multiplayer when the game wasn't designed for that in the first place and was doomed to fail in that regard...
It'd probably have been better received if it wasn't just 1v1 PVP...
Looking for peak player numbers on Steam DB is also a decent metric, in my opinion. And it seems like AoS and AR just didn't do well and they had a tendency to abandon their games too early without ever really finishing them. Even Dreadnought seems to be still only semi-finished, especially as far as the campaign is considered. So they made games that didn't sell well, so they had to abandon them and make something new, that then also didn't sell well and people caught on to them abandoning their games before their were really finished, which led to even fewer sales on the new game and that gives you a downward spiral.
Maybe going for a Napoleonic scenario would've been the smarter way. The American Revolution is in a way a very fresh and unused scenario, but it seems it is also an unused scenario for a reason.
American revolution would have been chosen to try and tap into the American markets and resonate with American gamers if it worked it would have been a major payday but sadly at this moment in time the thinking mans strategy games are being drowned out by 1st person shooters, but there's still hope one of the Devs on the naval action discord has said that they are starting a new company at the moment they have the rights to naval action and sea legends it wouldn't surprise me if Darth and a few of the others are joining them and may eventually acquire the rights to the ultimate general/admiral serries of games.
@@rosshughes7977 If anything the problem on the thematic side was Game-Labs being too American-centric. The ACW has a significant pop-cultural impact, but outside the US the AWI is an all but forgotten conflict, thus having 1.9 of your half dozen strategy games focused on that conflict was a gamble: the topic does not appeal to buyers outside the US, so you are down to US wargamers and wargamers who like their style regardless of the topic. And frankly the studio had not yet build the necessary fanbase that the latter was going to save the game's success.
Then there is the lack of focus and the ambitions exceeding Game-Labs capabilities. E.g. AOS IMO would have been a better game without the land warfare part or the rapid escalation to ships of the line and UAD probably should have focused originally on Northern Europe and the North Atlantic 1890-1920 (read, the Anglo-German naval race). A tighter focus not only makes quality control easier and helps to concentrate on core featuers.
In both cases it also could have provided a better long-term viability. For AoS a base game with a French and Britsh Napoleonic campaign would have allowed e.g. smaller campaign DLCs for Spain, with side theaters for France/UK (e.g. the Adriatic campaign), the US with quasi war and barbary wars or the Russian naval operations against the Ottomans in the 1820s, with a major DLC around the AWI. Similiar UAD with the above mentioned focus with France, Germany, UK, US and Russia as starting nations could easily have the Med (with Italy, AH and Ottomans) and East Asia (with Japan and China) as DLCs before even thinking about expanding the time period.
@@rosshughes7977 I'm just going to say it: These games were just not that good or engaging as strategy games on their own. The game's feel like mobile games and lack any level of graphical detail of other strategy games. Sure it's great for a mobile interface but as someone who's played strategy games my entire life I did not find them very engaging or interesting. If you removed the Historical theming from these games you have absolutely nothing. Hate to be so harsh but I was incredibly underwhelmed by the simplistic and uninteresting gameplay after hearing their games so heavily lauded.
Scourge Of War is an infinitely better game when it comes to historical battles, and there are countless Grand strategy games that do the overworld map stuff better too.
@@ulrichwolfgang9136 The UA:D alpha *was* focused on the Anglo-German naval race. They definitely would have better served perfecting the Anglo-German conflict before rushing onto other features and the global map. That wasn't the only issue though, the problem is that there were at least half a dozen features they didn't properly finish before starting on the next thing.
I'm not that sure player numbers are a very useful metric for these kind of games. I know games that have been going strong with developer support for 10 years that only get 50-100 daily players.
So, Ultimate General American Revolution IS unfinished, unready for 1.0, and they're abandoning the title, if I understand it lol
I knew that would happened. They did with multiple games.
That really is unfortunate, I had been keeping an eye on it
@@nathaniellindner313 Same - the unfortunate thing too is I feel like there are so few gunpowder era games covering north american theatre from 1700s to 1815 kinda deal - it's either 7 years war in europe or american civil war, nothing of the interesting conflicts that happened across the america's for the period, so even a game about the revolution is super interesting to me, I'm sad to find out how many players are disappointed they dropped 1.0 when they did etc :(
What a shame. I was intensely excited for that one. Explains the lack of updates though, I suppose :x
No need to apologize, this is great journalism and revealing important information.
Early access is only appropriate for a small studio's first game. Reinvest that profit in your second game, or close down.
This was great informative video. No need to apologize. I am aghast at what has happened. I am a retired vice president for a big non-profit in New York City and also a retired graduate professor. That being written... your take on these processes seems to be very accurate, IMHO. I am a historical gamer who still games often. I play all of the Darthmod inspired games like Ultimate General Civil War, Age of Sail and Ultimate General: American Revolution. I stayed away from Naval Action because of the intrigue and what I heard of a toxic community. I have been following Darthmod since his mods in Total War Empire, Napoleon and Shogun II. I also play modded (not Darthmod of course) Total War in Rome II, Attila and now Pharaoh.
Losing two big heads of Game Labs, downsizing and a focusing on mobile gaming does not bode well for good historical strategy gaming at Game Labs. I was also a frequent poster on TH-cam videos that featured Ultimate General: American Revolution during very early access and I saw that many features that were being recommended by serious gronards were not being implemented. It was fun at first but became very frustrating as I saw many good ideas not being implemented. I saw the hand writing on the wall based on my previous experiences. I left those forums to see what came out. A mixed bag for sure. That was in late November. So I settled in for an announcement of major patches after release along with major mod support after the Christmas and New Years holidays. Much too my dismay on January 2nd, 2025, I see your posting instead. I am very dismayed, and it never turns out well when you are acquired by a bigger studio or publisher. Short-term you get a cash infusion long term your product becomes watered down and flawed. Mostly because of outside pressure and not having someone big understanding you are creating. Ultimately you don't make enough money for the faceless ones who don't understand your product and/or process and out the door you go. This was listed by several posters, on this entry and it is a truism. Never ever trust a buy out from a bigger entity. The founders of the acquired firm will be bought out if fortunate enough, sacked and smaller firm downsized. Often into oblivion. I hope the two big heads of Game Labs come up aces and conti ue their excellent work. 😢
They had visionary ideas, but didn't have enough grounded employees that they listened to to make those dreams something that you could build a company with. Could be an issue of company scaling and trying to do too much with stretched resources. Unfortunately visionaries need to be focused by senior management (which I was as well) otherwise they will dig graves for their company or employees. Doesn't sound like these guys were listening to anyone (reminds me of the demise of SAAB).
@morinshin I agree, my friend. They needed to be more focused on at best one new game and improving their old games. 30 employees was not enough, and they stretched themselves too thin. Their biggest mistake was in being swallowed up by a mobile company, which was far from their core business model of dedicated historical strategy games. Hopefully, they will all learn a hard lesson.
@morinshin I loved SAAB, by the way. Too innovative for their own good, coupled with poor decision-making. GAME LABS became too enamored with the visions of the heads and were not grounded enough in reality.
thanks for the news info, would not have caught this without you. A shame how it went, but decreasing sales and the quality in the current games makes this IMO a financially sensible decision.
Wish the best for all the developers…
Sad news from a studio whose games I really enjoyed. I was really looking forward to UGAR because I'm interested in the period and it's totally under-represented in gaming. UGCV was a blast and I consider it one of my favorite wargames of all time - so easy to play, so difficult to master. UGAR got off to a really rocky start in apparently *very* early access and so I held off buying it until they shaped it up more (more features, fewer bugs, better balance). I'm truly bummed out that the game may never really be polished into the great product it should be.
Even if we lose Game-Labs we still got some absolutely fantastic games out of it.
UGCW is easliy one of my favorite games ever. I hope to see good things from Nick in the future.
One of my favorite wargames for sure. Really easy to play, really difficult to master. I was incredibly interested in UGAR when they got some patches to smooth things out.
Dodged a bullet there, I've been holding off on buying UA:D and UG:AR.
It’s always felt to me as though a lot of their games have succeeded in spite of studio decisions rather than because of them. They make games that appeal to a lot of us and the good will and hard work of the community is what takes them forward, often by undoing or tweaking changes made by the devs.
Great ideas fairly well executed then abandoned for the next shiny thing.
sad ending. but, I am here for THG doing investigative dives into the financials of game companies 😂. good work!
Sad, but for the better!
@tycondero1647 explain?
@@HistoryTeacherSteve See my other posts/comments for this video.
Anyone who has played "Naval Action" should be very familiar with the problems inside Game-Labs. It's a shame.
After getting Naval Action and watching it go from fantastic to bumbling idiocy, I swore to never give them another cent. I held to that.
how and why did they fuck that up that game so bad?
i was aboit to buy that game and then they got rid of instant action
@@mdstmouse7I not a 100% sure but it felt like they had a group of testers in the community they listened to and ignored everyone else and they just drove the game into the ground and when they got called out on problems they started banning people
@@zigzera7757 haha i asked on the naval action reddit page what happened to instant action and got downvoted into oblivion. there was no reason both modes couldnt have existed.
@@mdstmouse7basically they made the game for PvP resources were locked to certain ports in which your nation had to own in order to build ships that were needed to take port and actually play in PvP or the nation vs nation. So if your company or nation didn’t owe anything you could do anything. Then there was the port battles that happened at certain times. So if the Europeans made a port battle happen when all the US was asleep that port was a freebie. Then they started wiping servers. And anytime anyone complained on there forums they were banned deleted. Then they started to sell DLC paint then ships and the ships can get whatever build you choose and you get one per day so you can effectively have unlimited ships while the economy was built around building ships for your nation so if you didn’t buy DLC ships you effectively can’t PvP.
honestly, it was all their Wrongdoing that brought us here, very sad to see but after that disaster of naval action and that missed opportunity of UAD it is what it is, age of sail naval battles were fantastic tho
I hope the developers keep going with their game work and otherwise do well in whatever endeavors each one sets out to do.
Maybe the price point was to high to generate high volume sales? I dragged my feet on the titles I purchased for that reason.
Really great analysis, and interesting news. I enjoyed Gettysburg and have a number of the UG and UA games - some do seem to be under-baked, mixed reviews, like you say, and UG American Revolution seemed to be in Early Access too long. Didn't get the attention it deserved. A lot of Total War fans saw this team as perhaps a new dawn for the historical strategy genre, but this just goes to show again that major publishers do not see the genre as having a big enough market.
Had debated spending some Christmas money on UG: American Revolution. I think I'll hold off for the moment to see how the dust settles - if they're not going to further develop/support UG:AR, I'm not buying it. Wargames generally aren't big sellers, but Game-Labs also hurt themselves - the lack of proper tutorials in UAD was an egregious oversight IMO. Shame, because the games I had bought - UG:CW and UAD - were great games once you figure out how to play them.
I guess Stealth17 and BrotherMunro have pretty much moved on to Sea Power, so they'll still have plenty of content to release.
Many thanks to The Historical Gamer for breaking this story - yeah a long video but it kinda needed to be to explain what was going on. You have potential as a real journalist on the videogame development front.
not a huge surprise since stillwell seems to focus mainly on mobile stuff. sounds like they pulled a bit of an EA there.
well I guess that kind of answers the future of the unifinished feeling American Revolution.
I was just looking at buying that, but definately not now.
After the multiplayer DLC debacle with UA:D and how the devs lashed out at the well-deserved criticism they got for it, I'm not really surprised that Game Labs might be a sinking ship. To be brutally honest, I think UG:CW was their only good game. All the others were decent looking starts that they fumbled and abandoned.
Damn dude... The people who made ultimate general and shit? That's just tragic 😭
Great video.
Things are looking bad.
I'm not sure about the state of UA:D, but UG:AR would definitely benefit from a few more months of development.
Too bad they couldn't have been spun off. Perhaps the GameLabs team will be able to reassemble and keep working on future games.
Trust me, if so many people that are higher up and know eachother well from better times are leaving or forced to leave, we will see much better things from them in the future. Nick's days will only become brighter from here.
This is sad news. Naval Action and Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail were my first introductions to the devs and I loved what they were trying to do, and I still have UG and UA:D on my wishlist (even with sales, times are a bit tough, cant justify buying new games quite yet). I really hope for the best, but this isnt looking good. Thanks for covering this news, not a peep about this anywhere else I lurk.
These times are gone long ago. Now they make pieceses of s... software like UA: D, unfinished and completely unplayable.
Dreadnoughts is still an unfinished, bug ridden game after what now? 4-5 years of development?
As a customer I'm tired of all their mini patches and bugfixes only to find a product that is still infested with bad AI, unfinished stuff, bugs and errors.
Not a huge loss to me, I'm definitely not a satisfied customer regarding UA Dreadnoughts.
Promise and reality are diverging massively from one another, almost CA/ Total War style.
Thanks for this in depth look into what is going on
They never even implemented the most basic mechanic of a naval game: ship steering that works. It actually got worse as development went on. Oh, and I was banned from the steam forum for complaining about it.
"Could've been a 5 minute video..." LOL No it couldn't. XP Are you kidding? That was wall to wall with content. Thank you for the well structured breakdown. You make it look easy. I remember collabing with Nick on hobby modding stuff way back in our TWCenter days. I hope he's in a safe situation and that we may hope to see more from him in a new venture.
Well, life goes on. That's the way it's always been. None of this is good or bad. I really enjoyed the Gettysburg and Civil War games. I'm still mad about the complete mess that UA:D turned out to be. That game wasted so much potential. Whatever comes next, it's what it is. Let's hope, there are still some talented developers out there interested in strategy games.
That you can get 30k views on a 30 minute video examining the death of a minor game studio says thet this niche has a solid fan base. And that you're primary content creator for it. Keep it up. Great video. Sorry to see the death of rhe studio though.
Generally amazing games, shames its gone down like this.
As someone who interacted with Game Labs almost exclusively through the development of Naval Action, I honestly have mixed feelings about this. I've played some of the UG games, and they are absolutely great games. However, I *experienced* Game Labs through the forums for Naval Action. From the very beginning of development, the NA side of GL was wildly different from UG (I even remember the UG forums being under the NA ones, and distinctly remember seeing the Darth pfp, the only other red-letter admin account aside from the NA "admin" account).
There's a saying thrown around NA groups: Game-Labs doesn't do bad customer service; it's non-existent. From the very beginning the NA admins were neglectful if not outright belligerent when it came to its players (see the "you are playing *my* game" discord quote), from day 1. Every change was catered to the those players that were the loudest complainers and biggest payers. Any dissenting voices were banned. Negative reviews were met with lock outs from devs.
The whole thing is bittersweet for me; Naval Action had such potential, and was wasted.
Game labs is a company that has great big ideas, but implements them very very poorly. Almost every game ive gotten from them is an undercooked mess.
Lesson here is never get bought out
Well that sad news but 👍 I hope for best for the both of them but it also worries me for The future game lab projects.
If only they had made Napoleon instead of American Revolution.
People are downvoting the game not because of the era but because its unfinished so even if Gamelabs went for Napoleonic reviews will end up the same
@kou5479 i mean, maybe you are. I'm sad we went from 100k+ battles to like 10k personally
Try ultimate admiral starts in the colonies until revolution then you go to europe saving loyalists and such trying to stop the revolution.
Not much cav tho sadly since your navy
I think that it also doesn't help to win customer confidence when they release their games and quickly drop it to move on to the next. Very little QoL improvements and polish can scare some people away.
What a shame. The one studio giving Creative Assembly a run for its money. I could never get into the Ultimate General: Civil War, but they seemed to be developing something new and fresh in every title.
Well, as soon as the final patch for UA:D comes up I'll start playing it, what with no tinkering about to effect game breaking things in sight then.
The early access boom and bust was brutal. There are scant few games I buy in EA state because I have no desire to become unpaid beta tester(, because of the big EA) and the few EA games I do buy are either games I know I will play for a long time, or were on their last legs of early access discount before "going gold" and either were discarded a month after buying or stay in active roster until I join the majority as Romans would phrase it.
Shame for the dev though.
Very good piece of investigation.
For shame about the studio.
Always wanted to get into these games though I never found the time.
I think this explains why UG :AR was pushed to release. Gets it out of early access and officially launched to try and generate sales. Resl bummer as i loved ultimate general gettysburg and civil war. I just started a new campaign in American revolution. I wish darth and the others well. I hope they land on their feet and keep making games.
Sad news indeed, unforutnately a large amount of the time this is what happens when something is bought by a larger company. Hoping for the best though, as I personally have had great memories on UA: Dreadnoughts and I know that you all have had great times on the UA and UG games.
Well I guess there goes my dream of getting a good Napoleonic era game from them. Personally think more people would have bought into that over the American revolution as the Napoleonic wars are more well known than the AR. It's too bad because I fell in love with game labs because of ugcw. It's still one of my favorite single player strategy games even with its minor faults. That game really brought me back to Sid miers Gettysburg which I play a metric ton of as a kid. But only the graphics were better, the maps much larger and God damn is the AI really good in that game. Only strategy game I own that has an AI capable of making me feel like I'm fighting another person. But honestly after ugcw you could see the slow decline in quality of their games. Ultimate admiral age of sail was an alright game with great ideas behind it but was a huge let down for me in comparison to ugcw especially when it came to land battles. Dreadnaughts always looked great to me but I never bought it because the UI looked too messy and everyone was always complaining about bugs that to this day have gone unaddressed. I had high hopes for American revolution. And it still interests me but I'm terribly put of from purchasing it because people say in reviews that it feels very unfinished even in 1.0 but mostly for me the price tag is what killed it for me. Had UGAR been 30 or 35 bucks USD like their previous titles I probably more than likely would have bought it. Now I don't know I'll ever buy it or if they are going under if it will even be available on steam any more along with all their other titles. Which is too bad because I feel like UGAR just needed some time in the oven much like UGCW had after it's 1.0 release. It really is too bad. Game labs was for a long time on my radar as my favorite digital wargame company. Definitely sad times. But I do hope the two guys leaving find another publisher that will work with them in their vision for the kind of games they want to make and wish them all the best in their future endeavours.
I wouldn't give up on a Napoleon game. Its very possible they go off and start their own studio. The irony of wanting a Napoleonic game, is Sid Meier wanted to do Waterloo after Antietam. But Antietam kinda flopping a bit due to them trying to do a digital distribution strategy, and then their publisher EA pressuring them to do something other than a wargame, caused Sid to sell the Gettysburg game engine to Break Away Games (who then made Waterloo: Napoleon's Last battle) and Sid ended up doing Alpha Centari instead... so if it wasn't for EA, we would have had Sid Meier's Waterloo.
@@thehistoricalgamerEA strikes again with their mendacity.
I mean I kept my eyes on UA:D for possible purchase for years, but it never really got to the point where it finally seemed "finished" enough for me to be willing to pay for it before it started seemingly ignoring improving core features in favor of rushing things out like the campaign mode and the multiplayer thing that no one seemingly wanted or was interested in.
I'm a little sad - UGCW is one of my favorite games of all time - but I wish Nick the best and I hope he's able to land somewhere or start something that can make the games he clearly loves.
I’m sad about this. I really enjoyed a lot of their games.
Not entirely suprised. Gettysburg and Civil War where both amazing games I still play from time to time. Age of Sale was ok, but didn't have the same replayability for me. I refunded Dreadnoughts alf way through the terrible tutorial. I was really excited for Revolution but watching let's plays I didn't think it was going to be for me.
I hope Darth has the oppotunity to make more smaller, polished games like Gettysburg, if he does, I'll be buying them.
Should have just made a sequel to UG:CW and made multiplayer the main focus. All the tools were there for a 9/10 game.
I'm not sure I wanted multiplayer honestly, but if they had added multiplayer and maybe a operational campaign where you move armies around like Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg campaign, to test out the real time campaign mechanics without going full total war, that might have been a nice sequel/middle ground to hit multiple types of players.
This makes me sad. I have loved every Ultimate General/Admiral game they've put out....
Low performing is code now for, games we can't put monetisation in. And the problem with looking at reviews of historical games is, historical gamers are extremely picky. If you have one thing out of place the game is deemed crap.
untill people force the historical gamers to swollow there pickness or shame them for it hard enough that they drop enough standards then things would change.
@@TheManofthecross then the genre stops being historical games and becomes Fortnite in a vaguely-historical setting with slightly-historically-inspired skins.
There is a reasonable middleground here.
Yup
@INSANESUICIDE yea it's called COD vanguard
3 out of 30 employees is 10% of the company. and they happen to be some of the most important employees
3 that we know of, I think it’s safe to assume there’s more, given they’re also selling off one of their in development games, and they rapidly are ending further development on two recently launched games.
Good video, informative. Thanks.
I wonder if the original GameLabs employees might perhaps go to something like Triassic games. Stillfront and their business model is simply not a good fit for wargame developers.
This all reminds me of the nonsense with Hasbro-Wizards of the Coast-Larian and why Larian won't be doing BG4 - because Hasbro was so awful to deal with. Also, how CA ruined the Total War franchise and the ensuing banning of posts on steam about their said stupidity last fall-because they let Marketing people run their game development and never fixed the base game engine. More historically it heavily reminds me of naval scholar Dr. Alexander Clarke's comments on ongoing pattern of the British Ministry of Finance understanding cost, but not value - which lead to bad decisions that had direct impact on Great Britain's preparedness for WW2.
The MBA jargon in the Stillfront's press releases says it all - all jargon and ideology and no thought. The stupidity is strong in these ones.
UA: AoS remains perhaps my perhaps favorite of all time, so repayable. UA: American Revolution does things in an accessible way that even Matrix Games should envy, or any other hard core wargame of the old school - - the logistics rules are way out in front. Just hope these games remain serviceable through Steam. I'd argue that UA: American Revolution is what the Total War series should have become.
Hope Manor Lords doesn't suffer a similar fate.
The Great Northern War of 2024-2025. Swedish Imperialism is back again.
Thanks for the update though.
Exactly. This is how it often goes and no I think Manor Lords is in decent hands with their publisher. They are focussed on bringing low cost high potential interesting games to the market. They have way more passion for this genre, but Stillfront never had.
We will look back onto this eventually as a good thing. It sets Nick and the others free to start a new chapter and let their passion drive them.
Also, a company run without passion for what they sell doesn't work. I cannot judge their passion for shallow mobile stuff, but hardcore strategy wasn't one of them. This is for the best.
@@tycondero1647 Interesting to note that Nick turned down a CA job offer as I understand it, 10 years + ago (?), so he's a veteran of these experiences. My standard axiom for games now is - I want them conceived, designed, and developed in Eastern Europe - seems like the smartest folks out there. Then when they are made I'm looking for a Dutchman that does comprehensive discussions and tutorial - and of course TactiCat and Strat for ManorLords. PatmosIV for Ostriv. Stealth17 for UA series, especially Dreadnaughts. Larian opened up a brand new studio in Poland to work on their next games BTW.
@@KG-1 "Interesting to note that Nick turned down a CA job offer as I understand it, 10 years + ago", no what happened was he said he couldn't go to a modding summit, didn't get invited as a result, and then threw a hissy fit and rage quit TW modding (meaning, him compiling other people's mods).
I just wish they had continued to build upon UG:CW, and eventually give us a Napoleonic game. But I prefer land based warfare only. 🙂
I still think Ultimate General: Gettysburg was the best one. The map and art style was beautiful, and I loved all the location names on the map.
As a diehard fan of UG: Civil War and UG: Age of Sail, my bullshit alarms were ringing all over UG: American Revolution. Part of me wanted to take a leap of faith, but the poor state of their more recent releases were huge red flags. Its sad, but I'm glad I held off on buying early access.
There are so many titles being dropped these days. Thousands of new games ever year. Maybe even tens of thousands by now. It's very difficult, even if you truly have a great game, to hit with the right crowd.
if i understood it right , on the discord , Naval Action is being transferred to a new company . new server setup etc. patches etc. i do the think the same is with sea legends . all of us NA nerds always hit on Zasov , as being the guy why Na hasn't evolved the way it should , i do not agree with that at all . I think the guy is a straight forward dude and think that's awesome and the prime reason why NA was was done at all. I'd presume , and this is strictly theory, that the main guys are going to do their own thing to together and took NA and Sea Legends with them . I'd think the parent company didn't want to let the UG series go , because you can port that pretty good to mobile gaming . just my 2 cents and sorry bout the reference to Naval Action but that was the first game i got into contact with Admin and as much as everyone keeps goin on how bad it is , it's kinda funny everyone keeps coming back to see how the game is .
The vid was an awesome job excellent work 👍
and i was hoping for a future DLC or UA:D 2 with aircraft and maybe missiles
what a shame
I hope this all means we get Nick and Aleksander making something good. Game labs really got no idea what to do post UGCW.
Really hoping they add dreadnoughts to GeForce now before they go
Interesting analysis, good break down.
a company like gamelabs doesnt deserve to survuve, what they did to the players of naval action is unforgivable
Gettysburg was my first foray into game labs. I loved that game, but it was small in scope very complex with poor explanation. Naval Action was a dream game for me, I was in it since the start. It was so promising and could have been great. But poor development and changing game engines made it a flop. It is still fun to play and has great parts, but fails to deliver. I think UA Dreadnoughts is similar in that sense. The building mechanics are outstanding, and if that is your thing, then great. But the poor AI, poor AI auto build system, and campaign system leave much to be desired. Especially if you are coming from UG Gettysburg or civil war. Compared to their previous games, their latest can be a let down. But only because we know they can do better. All of their games I've played are worth it though. They are only studio where I own almost all of their games, and I will buy the others eventually. I will be sad to see them go, I hope their talent can find work elsewhere making games we want to play.
Judging from naval action pretty sure "Game-labs" is one dude buying assets, throwing something together and passing them off as games.
Gamelabs had 30 employees as of 2021 when they were bought by stillfront.
If you want to build the next Roblox or Fortnite, then Gamelabs does not fit your "strategy" (no pun intended). Too bad.
Indeed. Stillfront is more a company into shallow s****, so Game-Labs never matched their profile. Good riddance.
So the game will only get one patch?. It had a lot of potential. Why are they doing it so early? I wanted to buy the game, but if they refuse to improve the game, I don't know :(. I still miss drummers, flag bearers and commanders in battles...
They also abandoned this land is my land
Yeah I was super bummed about that. I really liked the concept thought it had it a lot of promise. And then it just died.
GL model of gamemaking was always make a game give little support, abandon it move on to make another game, repeat.
That was never sustainable especially since beyond gettysburg and civil war their games were not that great plus those are niche titles.
In general GL is done.
No please i just got dreadnoughts and it was getting so many little updates...plz no :( i love that studio, such easy to learn games that scratched a niche for me
I really liked this investigation! I don't have much to loose with the company going down, I hate to see any game company get shut down, or put into skeleton mode. But looking at comments and the games, they seemed to kind of... miss the boat? If they put more focus in the Ultimate General/Total War style games, I think maybe numbers could have been better? But I've never seen anyone really talk about Dreadnaughts outside of it being bad, or having a ton of problems.
I think you are right Historical gamer. Ever since game-labs was sold to Stlllfront did we fear of this day and scenario. Actually from a product perspective the acquisition never made sense. Stillfront is mostly in the casual mobile stuff (wouldn't call it games from my perfective, but I am a PC master race guy 😅). It made no sense that they were dipping their toes into hard core strategy gaming.
In a way, years from now, this is a good thing. Nick and the others will probably band together and start a new adventure of a new studio (I hope), free of money and performance driven corporate interference. Stillfront never showed much love so perhaps good riddance. Everything always has a silver lining. Perhaps now, Nick will be able to start to work on a actual total war competitor. He has enough experience and profile to attempt this IMO. Look at what Manor Lords' single developer managed in this day and age and Nick has far more experience than he has. Everything will be for the better eventually. 🎉
I thought he also did a lot of work on Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail.
Assuming you mean Darth, he didn’t list is on the projects he worked on.
@@thehistoricalgamer Ok, then. That's interesting because I remember lots of talk about him working on it when it was in development, but if he says he didn't work on it, then that's that.
Dang, this was like a full investigation. Well done.
Ha, thanks! Every once in awhile I put on the facade of being more “media” than “content creator”
@@thehistoricalgamer I was hoping you would call the interim CEO.
I think shipyard master is Ink. I think that’s what was figured out on the RS side of SL.
Who?
I was incorrect. I went back and looked. I apologize.
Silly comment perhaps, but CD Project RED isn't located in Eastern Europe (I'd say Poland is Central Europe but that's besides the point) because it's cheaper there, but because it's a Polish studio founded by Polish people who lived and worked in Warsaw. While it's true that big developers and publishers like to open satellite studios in countries where the cost of living is more bearable, there are also studios in those places that are opened because, y'know, actual people live and work there? :)
And CDPR has also done the opposite, they've opened up shops in more expensive parts of the world, namely in the Boston and Vancouver areas. The argument the opening of such studios is often then to be able to access the talent available in those areas.
Either way, yeah, this definitely the end of Game Labs as a developer of strategy games. It's a sad development indeed. At the very least, I hope American Revolution gets polished a bit further, and I hope the leading strategy devs find a new home and are able to continue working on good games.