Swedish studio Liquid Swords shuts down months after launching Samson

Liquid Swords, a Swedish studio founded by former GTA developers including Christofer Sundberg of Avalanche Studios, has announced it is shutting down. The closure comes roughly six months after the release of its debut title, Samson, an open-world action game set in the fictional city of Tyndalston. The game launched on Steam and the Epic Games Store on April 8.

In a post on X, Sundberg confirmed the shutdown, stating that while Samson performed better on consoles, the results were not enough to sustain the studio. He expressed pride in the team and what they had built, but acknowledged that the game launched with numerous bugs.

The future of updates for Samson remains unclear. Sundberg said discussions about continued support are ongoing, adding that the team is learning from mistakes and moving forward. He also emphasized that this is not the end of the world and that the studio will return in some form, though details are not yet known.

Samson was built using Unreal Engine 5 and features a dynamic open world powered by World Partition, procedural content generation, and advanced lighting through Lumen. The game’s combat system blends close-quarters fighting with vehicle-based action, supported by over 25 upgrade choices. Character animations were captured using motion capture and Epic’s MetaHuman framework, while the physics engine relies on Chaos Vehicles.

Despite close collaboration with the Unreal Engine team, the studio faced stiff competition from other major engines such as RE Engine, Decima, and BlackSpace. Whether Samson will evolve into a franchise remains to be seen, but the studio’s abrupt closure marks a short-lived chapter in indie game development.

ITavisen reported the story.