This games industry is as fragile as a man’s ego or as stable as a digestive biscuit teetering on the edge of a coffee cup. I don’t know that there is a better example of this than the struggles that we see Embracer under, mostly in a mess of its own making. Specifically, closing Piranha Bytes, selling to Nintendo, and shipping Gearbox off to 2K. If you haven’t caught up on this one, the company is in enough debt that Netflix might have bought it if it weren’t for being a games-focused company, and most recently, that is no better explained than Three Fields Entertainment’s Wreckreation.

Released back in October, the Burnout-esque game has a lack of modern flair to the point that it was always going to be difficult to claim a great amount of success from it. I’m not here to bemoan the success of Three Fields Entertainment and Wreckreation that has been found in spite of that, but rather something that was noted about two weeks ago on the Wreckreation Twitter by the studio co-founder and CEO, Fiona Sperry. Effectively, it was an open letter about the lack of support and backing by Wreckreation publisher THQ Nordic, a subsidiary of Embracer. As well as putting all staff on notice that it is on the edge of being shut down.

This is where I thought we’d be seeing another studio being shuttered within weeks, but the story somehow makes the games industry worse. If you’re signed up to the Three Fields Entertainment newsletter, then you probably also got the email yesterday. The studio has started a Patreon in a last-ditch effort to basically hold the 10-person team together and support Wreckreation. You can check out the post on Twitter too, if you like.

“Since [the Tweet announcing the lack of support], we have had a fantastic response from players who would like to see us have the chance to finish what we have started. Keeping our 10[-]person development team together costs around $65,000 a month, and like many independent studios, we’re exploring multiple ways to fund the future, including pitching new projects and seeking new partnerships,” notes the email.

It continues: “At the same time, we’re determined to keep doing what we’ve been doing best: updating Wreckreation quickly, responding directly to feedback, and evolving the game alongside the people who play it. That’s why we’ve chosen to launch a Patreon.“

If this isn’t a damnation on the modern publishing and game development landscape, then I don’t know what is. There is an article Alexx has done for our break over the next couple of weeks, effectively begging for more weird little games to be given a chance. Well, this is what happens. When the major publishers won’t release anything this side of games that will make $65-million through in-app purchases, or special editions, only for the studio to still lay people off because it still isn’t enough, how are the weird games going to be made?

I’m not bemoaning Alexx or the idea of weird games, but rather the industry that is propped up on debt the size of small countries. Keep in mind, this is the same Embracer Group that owns Plaion, which is the latest name for what was Koch Media, with one of Plaion’s divisions being Deep Silver, the publisher of one of this year’s biggest games, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Which, according to developer Warhorse Studios, had sold 4 million copies as of last month. I remember when 4 million was a great success, and Sperry’s greatest shipped game, Burnout 3, didn’t even sell that much by 2006.

How the top of this industry is propped up with the spittle of old men who are trying to wring every last drop out of it is beyond me. Wreckreation hasn’t sold hundreds of thousands of copies, I get that, but part of that is due to a lack of support from a publisher that is quite apathetic to doing its job, apparently. Hell, I didn’t even find out about the release date until days after it had been released. The PR hasn’t been great overall, so why would anyone care or get excited?

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