{"id":74851,"date":"2026-04-07T16:14:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T20:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=74851"},"modified":"2026-04-07T16:39:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T20:39:33","slug":"battling-layoffs-gta-comparisons-and-the-industrys-crap-how-just-causes-creator-is-risking-it-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=74851","title":{"rendered":"Battling Layoffs, GTA Comparisons, And The Industry’s “Crap:” How Just Cause’s Creator Is Risking It All"},"content":{"rendered":"

After years of development, and significant upheaval that led to half the development staff<\/a> being laid off and a major change to the project, Liquid Swords is releasing its first game, the gritty crime game Samson: A Tyndalston Story, on April 8 for PC. The studio was founded in 2022 by Christofer Sundberg, the outspoken and opinionated<\/a> co-creator of the Just Cause series at Avalanche who branched off to start a “zero-nonsense” studio in Liquid Swords.<\/p>\n

As Sundberg sees it, modern, traditional game development has become overwhelmed by “distractions that affect quality and motivation,” and Samson coming to market this week will show off what a studio with that charter is capable of delivering.<\/p>\n

GameSpot caught up with Sundberg this week to discuss his new game, the comparisons people are making to GTA<\/a>, and its $25 price point. Sundberg also shared details on how Liquid Swords had to pull back the game’s scope and ambition as a result of the layoffs in 2025 that the team said were necessary<\/a> to keep the studio afloat for the long term.<\/p>\n

“It is really make-or-break for us with the release of Samson,” Sundberg said. “A year ago we made the tough decision to lay off half<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After years of development, and significant upheaval that led to half the development staff being laid off and a major change to the project, Liquid Swords is releasing its first game, the gritty crime game Samson: A Tyndalston Story, on April 8 for PC. The studio was founded in 2022 by Christofer Sundberg, the outspoken…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":74853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external","brand-gamespot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74851"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74851"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74854,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74851\/revisions\/74854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}