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Industry

Ready at Dawn, the studio behind ‘The Order:1866′, ‘God of War’ on PSP, and more has shut down

With budget cuts at Oculus, Ready at Dawn becomes the latest storied studio to become part of the industry shutdowns.

Ready at Dawn Chains of Olympus

The story of Ready at Dawn comes to an end, one more of the sad stories that have not stopped in recent months, in what is one of the worst moments in history for workers in the videogame industry. According to Android Central, which claims to have access to internal communications, the studio that belonged to Oculus since 2020 has been put on the spot as part of a new cost containment policy that affects all areas at Meta and has resulted in thousands of layoffs. The part of the company that owns Facebook and Instagram dedicated to virtual reality is not immune to these policies either, which is why they have decided to part with the prestigious studio, despite it having released some of the best-rated VR games of recent times, such as Lone Echo (89 on Metacritic).

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The dismissal comes suddenly and for no other reason than adjusting the budget ceiling with which the division behind the Meta Quest works. There are no faults in the productivity of the studio, which continued to produce well-rated games within the Echo series. Since the number of layoffs does not exceed a certain number, the workers have not received advance notice and their compensation package is the same as other former Meta employees have received (16 weeks of salary plus 2 additional weeks for each year worked in the company).

A beloved studio that has done many well-received projects

There was a time when the future of Ready at Dawn seemed to be drawn in letters of gold, as one of the clearest candidates to become another prestigious member of PlayStation Studios. The Californian studio was born as a spin-off of Naughty Dog and had a solid relationship with Sony, which made them the ideal candidates to make a spin-off of Jak and Daxter for PSP, Daxter, which caused a sensation due to how the studio took advantage of the handheld’s technical capabilities. Then two of its greatest milestones would arrive, the PSP God of War games, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta, two full deliveries, fantastically conceived on a technical, mechanical, and narrative level, which are among the platform’s essentials. In between they also had time to do a great conversion of Okami for Wii.

The studio’s trajectory was cut short a bit with the jump to the big leagues. The studio signed with Sony what was intended to be a spectacular exclusive for PS4 in the form of The Order:1866, a game that received a great marketing campaign and that looked spectacular wherever it went, but that ended up falling badly upon its launch: too cinematic and constricted even though it was the trend of the moment in AAA, in addition to a story that left a bitter aftertaste because of how it ended. From never dropping below 80 and having several games at 90 on Metacritic, The Order crashed with a 63 and changed the direction of the team. Away from the uncontrolled budget of the AAA, the company made a triumphant turn to virtual reality, making the excellent Lone Echo, which later earned them the purchase of the company by Oculus, where they remained until today.

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