Following a difficult year for Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios, a “core team” of around 20 employees has now decamped to Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser’s Absurd Ventures, establishing a new studio that’ll be known as Absurd Marin.
Immortals of Aveum, a “single-player first person magic shooter”, launched to mixed reviews last August, and it failed to make much of an impact commercially. As a result, just a month later, Ascendent Studios announced it had made the “painfully difficult, but necessary” decision to lay off 45 percent of its staff, equating to around 40 employees.
And things didn’t get much better from there; earlier this year, it was reported a “large portion” of the remaining team had been furloughed, leaving the future of Ascendant in doubt. But now, Houser’s Absurd Ventures has announced it’s taken at least some of the studio under its wing, with a “core team” of around 20 former employees forming new developer Absurd Marin.
