Obsidian Entertainment, which released three projects in 2025 — Avowed, Grounded 2, and The Outer Worlds 2 — is rethinking its development approach. Although the games received generally positive reviews, sales of Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 did not meet Microsoft's expectations.
Studio head Feargus Urquhart does not call the situation a failure but notes: "It wasn't a punch in the teeth. More like: 'What a bummer. What do we take away from this?'"
The key takeaway was the decision to shorten the development cycle, which for the two mentioned projects exceeded five years. The problem of lengthy cycles was particularly evident in the case of Avowed. Initially, the game was conceived as an ambitious hybrid of Skyrim and Destiny 2, but after three years of development, the multiplayer component was abandoned, and the project was taken over by a new director. In the end, it took seven years to release.
To speed up processes, Obsidian plans to more actively involve external studios (as was the case with Eidos Montreal on Grounded 2) and reuse technologies. "We don't need to change everything from scratch every time," says Urquhart. "We argued internally: do players really care that we spent extra hundreds of man-months on an inventory screen?"
Developer Josh Sawyer also noted that releasing three games in a year is a sign of a planning failure, not a healthy strategy. "It's not good to do that. It's the result of something going wrong."
In the future, the studio intends to focus on several smaller-scale projects simultaneously to increase the chances of success. The next major undertaking will be a new game in the Avowed universe, while support for Grounded 2 and The Outer Worlds 2 will continue. Additionally, Fallout co-creator Tim Cain has returned to the studio to work on an undisclosed project.