You can trace the lineage of beloved games like Deus Ex, BioShock, and Dishonored directly back to Looking Glass Studios. This developer is one of the most notable in the history of the game industry, having effectively created the immersive sim genre through classics like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Thief. However, the studio's closure in 2000 wasn't really "sad," at least according to Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. It was simply a matter of economics.
"This isn't a sad day, it's an economically realistic day," Sweeney wrote on May 24, 2000. "Looking Glass spent lots of money making innovative games that never sold well." This quote recently resurfaced on social media, as gamers looking to hate Sweeney move beyond simply criticizing his mass layoffs, his bizarre jabs at Valve boss Gabe Newell, and Epic's increasingly AI-first approach to development.
Now, if I were a major industry figure who'd once written something callous about a beloved studio's demise, I think I'd do what I could to minimize the reach of that quote. I'd ignore it. If it spread too far, I'd apologize. I'd say I had grown over the course of the decades, and that I no longer believe as I once did.
Sweeney, however, retweeted his old quote today, saying "The crash in the game business nowadays is the first for the new generation of gamers, but only one of several in the history of games. Here are my thoughts from 2000 when a maker of beloved but long-unprofitable games went under."
With Sweeney already an unpopular figure among a segment of the gaming community, you can imagine how well this post has gone down. "The point of these posts is not to be popular; of course the most popular thing to do would be to lament the troubles in the game business as sad acts of nature and vaguely blame 'the system,'" Sweeney says. "I post because it's important for people in prominent positions to speak up on the root causes of what is happening in this crash as it evolves."
The crash in the game business nowadays is the first for the new generation of gamers, but only one of several in the history of games. Here are my thoughts from 2000 when a maker of beloved but long-unprofitable games went under.October 23, 2026
While Sweeney doesn't reference it directly, the recent shutdown of BioWare offers a sad mirror to Looking Glass's death decades ago. Another studio that made games in a niche genre for niche fans, building beloved titles at unsustainable budgets until the bottom fell out.
At least, that's one way you could look at BioWare's end. You could also see the studio's story like this: an unimpeachable maker of the best role-playing games in the world until it was bought by EA. Under the publisher, Mass Effect and Dragon Age built a core fanbase which would ultimately be alienated by pushes for broader market appeal, and what fans remained would be pushed away by Anthem's failed live-service push and a seemingly unending development hell for Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/this-isnt-a-sad-day-tim-sweeney-shares-the-time-he-called-a-beloved-studios-death-economically-realistic-more-or-less-says-you-shouldnt-boo-him-when-hes-right
