After a litany of mediocre reviews for its newest title, Forspoken, Square Enix has decided to absorb Luminous Productions Co. effective May 1, the company announced today. This move comes just about a month after Forspoken was released to lukewarm reviews from press and players.
In a press release from Square Enix this morning, it announced that it’s merging with Luminous Productions as “part of the Company’s efforts to further bolster the competitive prowess of the Group’s development studios, a goal set forth under its current medium-term business strategy.” Square Enix said the merger will “further enhance the Group’s ability to develop HD games.”
Luminous Productions released its own statement this morning in response to the news, reiterating that it’s committed to creating the DLC In Tanta We Trust between now and the merger and that it’s still on track for release this summer. The developers of the game might be merged into Square Enix, but the game will likely still receive support even though the studio will be dispersed.
The move isn’t incredibly surprising given the performance of Luminous Productions’ Forspoken, which just days before release suffered a massive leak, which then led people on social media to get ahold of some clips that had some questioning whether the writing would be good. It left such a bad taste in prospective players’ mouths that it likely affected player opinion going into the game for the first time.
When reviews came out for the game, it got a mid-tier Metacritic score, and then when the game was released and user scores started coming in, the game was torn to pieces. Right now, the game sits at a 64 for critic reviews and a 3.4 for user score.
While the DLC following the main story was already planned at release, players won’t be surprised if that’s the last piece of new content that comes out for the game after the merger happens.
