While Samson: A Tyndalston Story may have come out to mixed reviews, studio head Christopher Sundberg, who has previously also worked as co-director on the Just Cause series and was the co-founder of Avalanche Studios, has still expressed pride in the game’s release. In an interview with GamesRadar, he spoke about being tired of the current state of the gaming industry, with several recent lay-offs and project cancellations.
Sundberg said that Samson: A Tyndalston Story was made because he was essentially tired of “swallowing all the c*** that the industry feeds us,” and went on to talk about how leaders of the business are “just flushing it all down in the toilet.” He went on to note that, by making Samson, he would “rather go down screaming, than haven’t at least tried to get us back on track.”
Sundberg has been quite outspoken about the state of the gaming industry in the past as well. Back in February, he referred to the state of the industry as being “cowardly,” and spoke about how difficult it is these days to get a game made.
“I’ve been making games for over three decades and never experienced such a desperate, cowardly (they call it ‘risk averse’) and confused state of the business,” Sundberg said. “After the acquisition / over-investing party during ‘21-’23, we are dealing with the hangover, and it’s been going on for three years.”
He also made a note about Liquid Swords being “careful” with its budget planning, and having to lay-off half of the team to ensure that the studio would be able to have a better budget to work with in 2026.
“We have very careful cash-flow planning as we are on a limited budget,” he explained. “Last year, we made the tough decision to lay off (I don’t call it ‘restructuring’ or any other BS term for what it actually is) half the team, to buy us a longer runway into 2026. We made a bet, and we do everything we can to deliver a fun $25 experience to lay the foundation for the future. I hope our future players will see the potential in our work and follow us on our journey to make something bigger.”
Leading up to the release of Samson: A Tyndalston Story, Sundberg had spoken about how players shouldn’t expect the game to be completely bug-free on release. Rather, the studio is “making it the best it really can be; we can’t do more than that.”
“I made a promise to the team that I couldn’t keep a year ago, and now I’ve made a new promise to the team that is just working their asses off to finish this game.” That new promise was that Liquid Swords would “get this game out,” he explained.
In the meantime, the studio has already confirmed that Samson: A Tyndalston Story will be getting an update on April 10th, bringing in several bug fixes and addressing performance issues. The team is also working on fixing animated-related issues for future updates.
Samson: A Tyndalston Story is available on PC. For more details, check out our review.