Sleeping Dogs And SMASH+GRAB Developers United Front Games Shut Down

Sad news, the studio known for making Sleeping Dogs, and hard at work on the Early Access title SMASH+GRAB is reportedly has closed down shop. While rumours of it appear from a thread of NeoGAF, multiple gaming news outlets have reported the same thing, with Game Informer being the most definite on its reporting.

United Front Games first made its mark with Mod Nation Racers, a PS3-exclusive Mario-Kart-esque game and later helped making Little Big Planet Karting. The studio however, made its name known for releasing Sleeping Dogs, a competent GTA-like open world game that had to undergo development hell as the game changed from a sequel to the True Crime series to become and original game and have a change of publisher to Square Enix. Building up the success of Sleeping Dogs, they experimented with a free-to-play, asymmetrical mutliplayer game set in the same universe called Triad Wars, which failed to garner enough attention and has been canned during its beta phase.

Only recently the studio reemerge again with its new, self-published title SMASH+GRAB. Using their core strengths at developing a competent brawler mechanic (like the ones used in the Batman Arkham games) and place it in a multiplayer game with objectives and NPCs thrown in. In some ways it plays like a MOBA, but the concept is novel enough to stand on its own, plus it has its own brand of cyberpunk-dystopia gangsters aesthetic to it. The game is in Early Access, and the Free Weekend deal just ended, but the game is no longer available for purchase.

It is unfortunate to see another development team close shop, not when a new game is just about to be released. We at Gamer Malaya wishes the best to those affected by the closure and hopefully everyone can land on their feet and recover from this.

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