Warner Bros. closes studio behind "Shadow of Mordor"

Warner Bros. is closing several video game development studios. The US media company has now confirmed a corresponding report by Bloomberg. Monolith Productions, Player First Games and Warner Bros. San Diego will therefore cease their work.

“The quality of many of our new releases has missed the mark,” wrote gaming boss JB Perrette in an internal memo, according to Bloomberg. “We need to fundamentally change our portfolio and team structure if we are to provide the necessary resources to return to a strategy of fewer but bigger franchises.”

In other words: Warner Bros. wants to focus primarily on its established brands in the future. In addition to “Harry Potter”, these also include “Mortal Kombat”, “Game of Thrones” and DC Comics, including Batman. The fact that even these brands are no guarantee of success is shown by the release of “Quidditch Champions” last year, which fell short of Warner's sales expectations. By contrast, the open-world game “Hogwarts Legacy” in the same universe sold extremely well. Warner has not yet achieved much with its “Game of Thrones” brand on the video game market.

Known for Nemesis system

The best known of the three closed studios is Monolith Productions: the team from Kirkland has been making video games since 1994 and has published the two “F.E.A.R” games, among others. The studio is best known for its Nemesis system, which was used in the games “Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor” and “Shadow of War”. It generates dynamic stories with various adversaries that you encounter repeatedly during the game. Boss enemies in the Middle-earth games remember these encounters and behave accordingly in future battles.

Most recently, Monolith worked on a Wonder Woman game, which was presented in 2021. The game will be scrapped as part of the studio closure.

(dahe)