“We had three months to live” is how IO Interactive sums up the moment it nearly went under. Without the bald killer at the center of Hitman, the studio says it might not exist today – even as it pushes toward the finish line on 007: First Light after a brutal 2010s slump.

IO Interactive is not slowing down. The Danish team is polishing 007: First Light, its long-awaited game set in Ian Fleming’s universe, a project pushed back so the developers could improve performance and overall quality. But even with development now in its final stretch, the studio has been looking back at the period when it came dangerously close to disappearing.

Speaking to Game Informer, IO Interactive revisited the rough start of the 2010s after a run of original efforts like Mini Ninjas and the Kane & Lynch duology failed to land the way the studio had hoped. And while 2012’s Hitman: Absolution sold well, it still fell short of Square Enix’s internal targets, which triggered a major restructuring. From 2010 to 2013, successive layoffs cut the team from roughly 200 people down to about 70.

“We were in a really, really bad place. We had three months to live.” – said Hakan Abrak, CEO of IO Interactive. With the studio staring at the wall, it had to make hard calls, yet it committed to a single clear direction – putting its weight behind what would become the 2016 Hitman reboot. Abrak stresses that, even under heavy pressure, the team trusted a plan it had been shaping for years and chose to fully concentrate on reviving the Agent 47 franchise.

The studio opted for the classic, for Hitman, a saga that had already paid off for them

That bet did more than keep the lights on – it reset the company’s trajectory. Abrak argues that Hitman is stronger than it has ever been, and that without Agent 47 the studio simply would not have survived the early-2010s wave. Since then, IO Interactive has grown into an independent AAA developer able to finance and publish its own games – an increasingly rare position in an industry dominated by major corporations.

The success of the Hitman trilogy – capped by World of Assassination and reinforced by shifting Hitman 3 toward a games-as-a-service approach – ultimately validated the risk. Today, IO Interactive is not only operating from a place of real stability, it is also building one of the scene’s most promising projects: 007: First Light.

Source: 3djuegos