Tribes Ascend and Global Agenda cash cows ran low on milk

Erez Goren, CEO of Hi-Rez Studios, revealed on Reddit that both Global Agenda and Tribes Ascend lost money. While discussing future plans for Smite, the free-to-play MOBA, Goren wanted to clear up the notion that some people had that his company had been “milking” Tribes Ascend in order to fund development of Smite. He denied this accusation by pointing out that Smite was already profitable and that he had largely funded Global Agenda and Tribes Ascend with his own money from previous business ventures.

“How much did it cost to do the above? At that point I personally funded all the game development with over $30 million of funding (losses) and generated about $10 million in revenue (split fairly evenly between GA and Tribes) so overall we spend about $40 million running the company vs $10 million in revenue. Yes, my wife thinks I’m crazy, but what does she know about playing and making video games :)”

Erez Goren also said that outside companies looked at publishing Tribes Ascend as a console port or taking it to China, but the game was deemed “too niche” for a wider audience. In the end, Smite ended up supporting Hi-Rez and keeping the Tribes Ascend servers online.