Development of Striden Comes to an End
Hello everyone. This post is a nightmare for a game studio to have to write. We are forced to share the sad news that we will have to stop development of Striden . As we have not succeeded in generating enough sales to survive, nor have we managed to secure new investment. Our ne
Hello everyone.
This post is a nightmare for a game studio to have to write. We are forced to share the sad news that we will have to stop development of Striden. As we have not succeeded in generating enough sales to survive, nor have we managed to secure new investment.
Our new game mode, Survival, was not just the name of a mode, it was also our final attempt to survive for Striden as a game.
Behind the scenes, we conducted several playtests with investors and publishers to convince them that we had a rough diamond that just needed more time and resources to become something truly great. In the end, their response was that they wanted to see how the launch of Survival performed before making a decision about new investment or a publishing deal.
With the results now in, we have unfortunately not managed to attract enough new players or bring back those who had previously purchased the game. As a result, we have no funds left to continue.
Our last hope was that sales would increase so we could continue development through copies sold.
This does not come as a shock to us. We already saw this coming in the autumn of 2025 when we lost many players early after entering early access. We have learned a great deal from this, and we could spend forever discussing what we could have done differently. Unfortunately, a large portion of our resources went toward things we had not budgeted for or anticipated, such as fixing internal and external issues after we were targeted during early access by a cyberattack on our studio, as well as cheaters who removed players from our servers and posted racist messages in chat for example.
The only positive news I can share is that the police have made progress in their investigation into this attack, and the preliminary investigation is still ongoing. We hope those responsible will be brought to justice.
Large portions of our budget and resources were spent restoring everything and building new security for both our studio and the game—resources that should have gone toward an achievement system and more content / bug fixes to retain players.
During the autumn, we had interest from several major publishers, but their hesitation was due to the low number of active players. If we could reverse the trend and bring players back while attracting new ones, they would be interested in joining the project. This put us in a catch-22 situation, as we were in great need of funding specifically for marketing.
During the autumn sale, we managed to regain some momentum and saw a positive trend after a lot of hard work. We increased player numbers again, but shortly after, several major new titles were released, drawing many of our players away. Naturally, these were great games but they made things much harder for us.
We continued working on Transmit and also developed a new game mode that required fewer players, but it did not have the desired impact, so we had to rethink our approach. We then focused all our efforts on creating an experience that could be played both solo and with others, which became Survival. With our limited budget, this was a huge challenge for a team of four developers—to essentially create a whole new game in four months. But we were determined to make it happen because we truly believe in Striden. We gave it everything we had. These were not normal workdays—we worked 14-hour shifts to realize our vision.
Now we are here. All staff at 5-Fortress have been laid off, and we are forced to shut down both our development and our dream with Striden. It has been an incredibly educational journey for us.
However, we have all gained immense experience and built a strong network, which we may one day make use of again. Only time will tell.
First and foremost, we want to thank:
*All the incredibly talented developers at 5-Fortress
*All the game students who did their internships with us
*Our “secret” Battlefield veteran developers & producers (you know who you are) who gave us valuable advice on how to improve Striden.
*Behold Ventures
*Yahaha Games
*Nortify
*FutureGames Sweden
*TGA
*All investors and publishers who playtested and gave valuable feedback
*Veterans in the game industry who supported us and gave amazing feedback (you know who you are)
*And of course, our wonderful community who supported us, stood by us, and helped us continue developing Striden.
What happens now with Striden?
We will keep our servers running until the end of April. After that, we will unfortunately shut everything down, and Striden will be removed from Steam. Sadly, we have not been able to find anyone to take over.
I understand that many of you will be very disappointed in us, but we truly tried everything we could to save Striden.
Thank you for everything, it hurts so much to say goodbye for now.
// 5-Fortress
