Echtra Games, the studio responsible for 2020’s Torchlight 3, has been closed down by its parent company Zynga, presumably leaving its as-yet-unannounced cross-platform action RPG abandoned for eternity.
Per an IGN report, Echtra’s shutdown is part of a “strategic realignment of [Zynga’s] resources and priorities”, which is pretty typical corporate-speak that generally appears to mean “the studio wasn’t making us any money and wasn’t likely to in future”.
Echtra’s only game was Torchlight 3, which began life as a pseudo-MMORPG by the name of Torchlight Frontiers. Eventually, however, Frontiers‘ development scope shifted, and the project became Torchlight 3 instead, with the release moving from publisher Perfect World’s Arc platform to Steam and consoles (and later the Switch).
Following Torchlight 3‘s release in 2020, Echtra Games was acquired by mobile giant Zynga in 2021, a few months before the company acquired Golf Rival and its developer StarLark in August that same year.
Several months after that, in January 2022, Zynga itself would be acquired by GTA IP holder Take-Two for $12.7 billion, which was the most expensive gaming acquisition until Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard just a few days later.
When Echtra was acquired by Zynga, the company said its new acquisition was working on a “new, yet to be announced RPG for cross-platform play in partnership with Zynga’s NaturalMotion studio”.
That project was never announced in full, and it now looks like it never will be, unless work on the game is transferred to another studio within Zynga. We’ll have to wait and see, I suppose.
Echtra Games’ closure comes at a turbulent time for the gaming industry, with many studios either undergoing layoffs, canceling projects, or shutting down outright.
Other studios to shut down in recent months include Condemned and Shadow of War developer Monolith, as well as the Seattle NetEase studio responsible for Marvel Rivals, Risk of Rain 2 studio Hopoo Games, and EA studio Cliffhanger Games, which had been working on a Black Panther game.
