Video Games
The Unrated Version of ‘Agony’ Has Sadly Been Cancelled
As you’ve probably heard by now, some boundary-pushing content that was originally set to be included in Madmind Studio’s recently released Agony was excised from the game due to its graphic content, but an unrated version had been set for release in a few months. Agony Unrated was to be released on Steam, with all the cut content added back in.
Sadly, Agony Unrated has been scrapped completely. Madmind broke the news today…
“We regret to inform you that our company is currently struggling with financial problems. Due to technical and legal reasons, Madmind must cancel the development of Agony Unrated. Part of the team will continue to support Agony on Steam and consoles by publishing new patches.
Regarding the Xbox One patch – we have managed to find and fix the bug that was present on the Xbox One X console. We have sent the improved update to our publisher, who will pass it to the Microsoft today or tomorrow and we are expecting it to be approved in the next couple of days.
PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC will get another patch this week. It will introduce many fixes and a highly refined lighting system.”
Overshadowing the announcement of Ninja Theory’s third entry in the Hellblade series earlier this month were reports that the developer was facing possible closure by Microsoft, alongside South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games and Double Fine. Now according to a new story by GamesBeat, another developer under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella is potentially facing closure in Undead Labs, who are currently working on State of Decay 3.
Earlier this month, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma had announced that Microsoft was in the process of ‘resetting’ Xbox. That resulted in a report by Bloomberg during Summer Game Fest that revealed that multiple developers were negotiating with Microsoft to spin off of Xbox to avoid closing down. Now, according to the GamesBeat report, Undead Labs is now part of that group of developers negotiating to be bought to avoid layoffs.
The article states that Undead Labs could lose 110 jobs if it were shut down, while Compulsion could lose 90 jobs, Ninja Theory could lose 135 jobs, and Double Fine Productions could lose 100 jobs.
Other developers and publishers at Microsoft also reportedly face cuts, including Blizzard, id Software and Bethesda.
Undead Labs was acquired by Microsoft back in 2018, with State of Decay 3 being announced in 2020. News on the development of the game was quiet until 2024, when a new trailer was released. Updates on the game again were hard to come by until last January when then-Xbox Game Studios lead Craig Duncan revealed that development was still very much alive. That was followed up this month with an official announcement that State of Decay 3 would be coming next year to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store.