United Front Games, the maker of Sleeping Dogs, ModNation Racers and the now-cancelled early access title Smash + Grab, has closed its doors today.
Reports about the studio shutting down hit the internet around 11:00 AM Sydney time. It was a surprise rumour given that United Front Games had just run a free weekend on Steam for their latest title, an early access third-person brawler.
Quickly after, people started noticing that Smash + Grab had been pulled for purchase from Steam:
Smash + Grab removed from Steam an hour ago. RIP United Front Games pic.twitter.com/qyYwkjr8O6
— Wario64 (@Wario64) October 18, 2016
A source within the studio then confirmed to Kotaku Australia that United Front Games has closed down.
We’ve reached out to United Front and their PR representatives in Australia and abroad for an official statement, but had not heard back at the time of writing. There also hasn’t been any official announcement on Smash + Grab’s social media or Steam pages, or that Smash + Grab has been pulled from sale.
The studio’s closure comes after it announced the closure of Triad Wars at the start of the year. Triad Wars was a multiplayer based off the original map from Sleeping Dogs, the open-world action-adventure that United Front will probably be most remembered for.
United Front also collaborated with other studios on larger projects, building the frontend for Halo: The Master Chief Collection, as well as working on the Xbox One of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition.
Comments
14 responses to “United Front Games Has Closed Down”
Well thats a shame 🙁
This is not nice news.
I think I managed about a quarter of the way through Sleeping Dogs.
It was a great game to play on PC from the outset because of how my new graphics card at the time managed to output some wonderful visuals from a game that was of course released on console first/as the main release.
I must get back to it, but when I do it’ll be bittersweet.
Sleeping Dogs was my favourite game of 2012, I was disappointed when the Triad Wars spinoff was some F2P rubbish, but maintained hope they’d do a proper Sleeping Dogs 2. Now I guess that’s pretty unlikely. 🙁
Same here. I was looking forward to a Sleeping Dogs 2 and when I heard they were doing the Triad Wars MMO instead, my first thought was “Well, this can only end in tears”.
It sucks to be proven right sometimes.
Oh sad 🙁 I would have loved to see a Sleeping Dogs 2, really enjoyed the first one.
They were actually advertising for jobs about 6 months ago, weird.
Goddamn it Sleeping Dogs was awesome! It filled that void between GTA and Saints Row, it was so good. I was hoping so much for a part 2 🙁 Hopefully someone else buys the property and continues the story of Wei Shen 🙁
Loved Sleeping Dogs. I’ll crack it back open tonight and give it another run through. Great game.
R.I.P. Sleeping Dogs, was always hopeful a sequel would come to fruition…what a damn shame
Agreed, Sleeping Dogs was such a sleeper hit and I recently picked up the xbox one version for cheap, will def be playing it again now.
Lots of love for Sleeping Dogs which is understandable, but ModNation Racers was a great kart game with fantastic customisation and awesome track creation features. Spent almost as much time creating characters as I did racing.
Sad news, hopefully they find a new home elsewhere.
Got about halfway through SD on PC. Will have to buy for XBox and finally complete it.
I don’t understand how they didn’t just make a new Sleeping Dogs game.
I know it had a shithouse development cycle, originally starting life with Activision as a True Crime game. But god damn.
Every time they announced something people asked why it wasn’t another Sleeping Dogs game.
The love people had for that game, you’ve got to wonder why they didn’t just get started on that instead.
Loved Sleeping Dogs. I was hoping for a sequel, but that’s dead in the water now. This sucks.