It's never a good thing when an overly-ambitious studio bites off more than it can chew, and it's an even worse thing when that results in their company running out of funding and being forced to declare bankruptcy
Sadly, this is exactly the case for UK-based studio Automation Games. Their latest project, Mavericks: Proving Grounds, was aiming to be a AAA-caliber Battle Royale shooter with cloud-based persistence and support for a whopping 1000 players in a single match. Aside from being a lofty goal even for a large, fully-backed team, it is not currently known whether funding was pulled from the project or if they simply ran out of money.
If you take a look at Automation's website, nothing appears to be amiss until you scroll down to the very bottom of the home page:
Paul Cooper and Paul Appleton were appointed joint administrators of Automaton Games Limited on 30th July 2019. They are managing the affairs, business and property of the company. The joint administrators act as agents of the company and act without personal liability. Paul Cooper and Paul Appleton are licensed to act as insolvency practitioners in UK by the ICAEW. Please be advised that due to insufficient funding, the development of the Mavericks: Proving Grounds game has now ceased. The joint administrators are in the process of licensing the Deceit game so there will be no change in the live operation and provision of this game.
As you can probably surmise, the only silverish-lining to be found here is that the caretakers of Automation's assets are in the process of securing a new home the company's other IP, Deceit.
With this latest studio closure and subsequent cancellation, the battle royale genre's body count continues to mount as more aspiring contenders either fall by the wayside fail to launch entirely.
