Mimimi Games, the developer behind Shadow Tactics, Desperados III and the very recently released Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, has announced that they will shutting down.
This isn’t because of game launches underperforming or financial hardship, but rather because, after 15 years of making games with very little downtime, founders Dominik Abé and Johannes Roth felt it the right time to call it a day and put life, family and personal well-being first.
The team was informed of the decision prior to the announcement made and thankfully, because of bringing Shadow Gambit to release, all employees will receive bonus pay. Additionally, this isn’t a sudden shutdown and ending, with the studio winding down over the coming months and plans remaining to continue to patch and support Shadow Gambit. That winding down period will also give everybody time to find new work.
As developer shutdowns go, it’s one of the nicer ones we can think of, though it’s still sad to see Mimimi closing down. The only other solution would have been for Abé and Roth to pass ownership on to the employees as they step away themselves.
Here’s the statement from Abé and Roth:
It is with a heavy heart that today we have to share the news that Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew will be Mimimi’s final game.
As we look back at our 15-year journey crafting games (and crying about it), we feel grateful for the incredible love and support we received from all of you. We cherished every game we made and feel proud of what we were able to accomplish as a studio.
At the same time, dedicating the past decade and a half of our lives working on increasingly ambitious games took a heavy personal toll on us and our families. After the release of Shadow Gambit we decided it was the right time to prioritize our well-being and to pull the brakes instead of signing up for another multi-year production cycle.
While this means that we won’t start production on a new big game, we will continue to fully support Shadow Gambit. We are already working on a patch across all platforms and have a big content drop planned for later this year, which we are sure you will love just as much as we do!
This also means we will be slowly ramping down the studio over the next few months. We shared this decision with the whole team at an on-site meeting before releasing this announcement. […]
We want to thank our community and fans for playing our games and engaging with us. Your joy and support were what fueled our passion!
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew released earlier in August, the latest iteration on Mimimi’s take on the stealth tactics genre. In our review, Aran said, “Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is a challenging tactical game with a fun story and characterful crew. The varied missions do a good job of giving you plenty of options for how to tackle them, leaning into different crew abilities. There’s a few rough edges, but Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew’s treasure hunt is well worth partaking in.”