Rune II Interview

Right now, Studio 369 is working on overhauling the narrative side of their Viking-themed action-RPG Rune II in order to eventually bring it to Steam. And now that things in general are looking up for the game, we can check out this PC Gamer interview that primarily revolves around Rune II’s disastrous and even bizarre launch where Human Head Studios suddenly imploded, leaving the game’s publishers without the tools to support it.

Here are a few sample paragraphs:

Human Head told Ragnarok that it was shutting down on November 7, less than a week before Rune 2 was set to go live. It refused to say why it was closing so suddenly, Rune 2 executive producer Matt Candler said, and did not allow the publisher to attempt to hire any of its employees as contractors. The developer agreed to support the game post-launch while Ragnarok worked out a longer-term plan, but Candler said Human Head ghosted them on that, too.

“We did a ton of great work, set up a lot of interviews and a lot of streams, spent a lot of money, and they never showed up,” Candler said. “We launched the game ourselves, we had a great day on November 12. We got initially, really strong reviews about the game, saying that this is kind of a cool indie game. And then Wednesday morning, the 13th, the first thing I see is people saying, look, Bethesda makes an announcement that they’ve founded a new studio in Madison, and all the employees of Human Head are now employees of Roundhouse Studios, a Bethesda studio.”

Making the timing even more surprising, Human Head left behind money by bailing out early: Candler claimed the studio would have earned $67,000 on the final milestone, due after release, and another $110,000 for supporting the game post-launch.

“They could’ve kept their mouth shut and collected the money, and we would’ve been like, yup, here you go. And we would’ve gotten through a successful launch together,” Candler said. “We could’ve transitioned the game if they weren’t able to participate anymore, we could’ve transitioned naturally—here’s the source code, we’ll help you find somebody. But they didn’t do that. They actually did everything they could to prevent us from supporting the product.”