Reigns and Card Shark developers Nerial have announced that they’re shutting down or at least, “entering hibernation mode”, following discussion with their parent company Devolver Digital. By the sound of things, the entire team are now “seeking new opportunities”, as is the parlance of studio closures.
CEO Tamara Alliot and creative director François Alliot broke the news on social media in a joint letter, saying that “we have decided together with our partners at Devolver to end development at the studio”. They don’t go into detail about the reasoning for the closure, beyond saying that they need a change after 13 years at the helm.
“While this marks the end of Nerial as we know it, it’s not the end of game dev for us,” the Alliots continue. “We’re going back to our roots. François’ unrelenting drive to make games is as strong as ever, but first we need to take a break and reflect on everything that’s happened, before coming back with a new perspective.”
The Alliots have also posted about the closure on LinkedIn. “Nerial has been a huge part of François Alliot’s and my life for the past 13 years,” writes Tamara Alliot on her LinkedIn page. “[It’s] with great sadness that we are stopping now, as we have the best team in the world, but we are also keen to take a bit of time off. The following Nerial folks are affected by this decision, please hire them, you won’t regret it. Oscar Harrington-Shaw (Narrative and writing), Helen O’Dell (Art Direction), Neil Goodman (Lead Programmer), Gordon Speirs (Programmer), Ben Obikoya (Senior Programmer), Neil Bull (QA Lead), AJ Kerr (Senior Producer).”
On his own LinkedIn page, François Alliot adds that he is going “back to being pure indie”.
This one hurts! Nerial have made some of my favourite games of the past decade. Card Shark is a beautiful, mannered period puzzler devoted to the obscurities of cheating at cards. The Crush House is a suffocating study in how people can be reduced to Content by gamified surveillance systems. Reigns is a bloody royal comedy and an elegant, lightweight strategy game played out by swiping right or left.
I have to say, I’m not hugely impressed by the explanations given for Nerial’s “hibernation” and the associated layoffs. On paper, it invites the question of why the departing founders couldn’t have just let the company carry on in other hands, while they take a sabbatical.
Still, it seems likely that the decision also reflects parent company Devolver’s financial situation. In August, the company’s bosses told shareholders they’d like to cease trading on the London Stock Exchange, following an industry-wide “period of significant disruption and volatility” during which they’ve had to swallow “several impairments of underperforming titles amid an increasingly competitive and unpredictable market environment”.
Whatever the causes of the closure, it’s a crappy industry that can’t keep a team like this in work. Best of luck to everybody affected.
