The latest game from Hanger 13, the team behind Mafia III, will not see the light of day. Publisher Take-Two has reportedly cancelled the unannounced title, according to an insider report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier. He claimed that prior to its cancellation, the game was referred to with the working title of Volt, was to feature superheroes, would have online play. In an earnings statement, Take-Two said it would be losing $53 million as a result of ending the development of "Volt", which had been in the works since 2017.

Employees of Hangar 13, which also is owned by Take-Two and based in Novato, California, will meet Thursday to discuss next steps for the studio. Take-Two didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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[subcon959]

The $53 million could've just been what they already spent on executive bonuses..

 

[Marc_LFD]

Imagine how bad it must have been

Take Two knows all about that.

 

[diggeloid]

Imagine working on a project that massive for so long just to have it cancelled. I expect there will be some people quitting after this, in addition to the inevitable firings. Might even be the death of the studio.

 

[raxadian]

Is this even newsworthy? It was so early the game didn't have a name!

 

[ZeroFX]

mafia 3 developers suck hard so maybe its a good thing, but hey, a nicer thing: taketwo lost money, always a good thing (not like its much for them but...)

 

[Mindless_Toxin]

Is this even newsworthy? It was so early the game didn't have a name!

Name was "Volt"

 

[eyeliner]

That 53 million are probably the calculated profits they had market researchers come up with (yes, this happens and are called projections, and can be quite exact, most of the time).
I don't think they can really say upfront how much they already spent, as mostly, whatever developers do, gets reused in other projects.
This happens all the time, but I don't remember seeing a publisher stating how much of a dent a canned project would make.
I hope the studio gets to use whatever they learned in the next project.

 

[FAST6191]

That 53 million are probably the calculated profits they had market researchers come up with (yes, this happens and are called projections, and can be quite exact, most of the time).
I don't think they can really say upfront how much they already spent, as mostly, whatever developers do, gets reused in other projects.
This happens all the time, but I don't remember seeing a publisher stating how much of a dent a canned project would make.
I hope the studio gets to use whatever they learned in the next project.

While I don't doubt it was some creative accounting to value the loss (the resulting assets being valued in the pennies or something for those purposes*, even if they will reuse things for years to come or were they to sell them to others it would sell for far more) I don't think it would be calculated/projected profits, mostly as the tax man will not buy that for a second where ? devs working for Y years + building rent + depreciation of computers + whatever other fees is an easy R&D thing you can count as a loss for your tax purposes. That said I suppose we are not playing auditor and instead they could use the "woe is us, look at what that filthy pirate did" thing they would use in a court case to calculate damages, or maybe just "if we had farmed them out to another studio instead for fees".

*technically a lot of accounting will do this anyway to avoid having lots of apparent assets you get taxed for, or things you can claim as tax. See stuff like the coca cola trademark being internally valued at a few hundred or something even when demonstrably not.
https://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/trademark-balance-sheet-asset for a more general example.