“Frost Giant overhyped and underdelivered” with Stormgate, CEO admits

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Over the past few weeks, Tim Morten, CEO and co-founder of Frost Giant, has been sharing thoughts on LinkedIn about the journey of their RTS game, Stormgate – from its development and launch to its disappointing commercial performance. In a recent post, he acknowledged that they created too much excitement around the game and didn’t quite meet player expectations, and outlined what he’d change if he were to relaunch it.

Morten admitted the game launched before it was fully ready and explained he should have started with a smaller, more focused project. He believes they should have initially concentrated on the main single-player story and basic one-on-one multiplayer before adding features like co-op.

Stormgate aimed to become the new leading competitive real-time strategy game, hoping to surpass StarCraft 2. However, its initial launch into Early Access didn’t meet expectations, a result similar to that of other games attempting to follow in StarCraft 2’s footsteps.

Morten was frank about Stormgate’s launch: it didn’t go well at all. In a recent post, he admitted he was surprised by how badly the game performed after leaving Early Access, even though he expected some player drop-off from the previous, somewhat flawed launch. He and the team worked incredibly hard, but the game’s commercial failure was still a shock.

So, Stormgate didn’t exactly take off, and things are tough for the team at Frost Giant right now. Basically, Morten – one of the guys leading the charge – said that making a new game is what they *really* need to keep going. He admitted getting funding for a new project takes ages and there’s no guarantee it’ll happen, but he’s still optimistic, even though he knows it’s going to be a real struggle. Fingers crossed they can pull it off!

The company is also working on licensing its SnowPlay Engine to other developers. This would generate revenue while letting others benefit from its technology. SnowPlay is built on Unreal Engine 5 but has been specifically improved to handle large-scale, online games with many players – something standard Unreal Engine 5 often finds challenging. This makes Frost Giant’s engine particularly appealing to developers working in that area.

Frost Giant isn’t alone in facing sales challenges among studios started by ex-Blizzard employees; Dreamhaven, founded by Mike Morhaime, recently had to reduce its workforce to lower expenses.

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2025-10-07 15:46