The new Alien shooter is now being made under Daybreak
In space no one can hear your business acquisitions
Daybreak Games, the makers of PlanetSide 2 and EverQuest, have bought Cold Iron Studios. Formed in 2015 by former City Of Heroes and Neverwinter developers, Cold Iron have been making a yet-unrevealed shooter set in the Alien universe for several years. While business acquisitions aren't usually that interesting, this one means that mysterious Alien game might actually see the light of day.
Cold Iron Studios were bought by Fox back in 2018. The following year, Disney bought Fox in a massive acquisition, which Brendy rightfully pointed out made the xenomorph a Disney princess. But then! At the beginning of this year, Cold Iron were bought by mobile game dev Scopely, who have now sold the studio on yet again.
The news that Daybreak are the buyers is a little surprising, seeing as they've gone through multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, and in 2019 they shut down PlanetSide Arena after just four months.
But Daybreak have their sights set on this game now, saying they'll provide support and marketing as the publisher while Cold Iron operate independently. We still don't know a whole lot about what they're making. Daybreak's announcement yesterday says it "promises to deliver an action-packed, sci-fi shooter experience unlike any other game on the market." Not too ambitious, then. It's not too far-fetched to think that the game might be a bit MMO-y, given games both Daybreak and Cold Iron have worked on. It's also worth noting that Cold Iron have referred to it a few times as an "Aliens" shooter as opposed to "Alien", so make of that what you will.
We did briefly think Cold Iron's game might be 'Alien: Blackout', but that turned out to be a mobile horror game.
All I truly want from a new Alien game is for it to not be another Aliens: Colonial Marines. Actually, I hope they're not taking too much inspiration from the recent films either. I watched Alien: Covenant for the first time the other night and it's just a lot of Michael Fassbender being creepy at Michael Fassbender for two hours.
I'd be remiss if I wrote about Alien without at least mentioning the best take on the film series, Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation. We reckon it's one of the best horror games on PC, and spoke to some of the devs to find out how they managed to make it so darn scary. Isolation is gonna be a tough act to follow.
For now, we'll just have to wait and see what Cold Iron have planned.
