The Swedish gaming conglomerate Embracer Group thought it could buy a dozen development studios, then use them to build an empire rivaling Activision and Electronic Arts. When that didn’t happen, Embracer did what companies often do in this situation… they killed the studios they purchased, while keeping the intellectual property for smaller, cheaper outside developers to mangle… er, manage.

Unfortunately, Volition was one of the studios that fell prey to Embracer’s fatal embrace. Volition is of course best known for the Saint’s Row series of increasingly silly open world action games… the first title was a fairly bog standard Grand Theft Auto clone, but by the fourth Saint’s Row game, the lead character and his friends were trapped in a Matrix-style VR simulation, complete with superhuman jumps and glitchy bystanders.

However, what many players may not know is that Volition created the warmly received 360 degree air combat shooter Descent and its sequel, along with the first two games in the Red Faction series, which introduced destructible environments to the once largely static FPS genre.

Volition’s last title, a remake of the first Saint’s Row, left both fans and critics cold, but shutting down a development team with over a quarter century of experience over one failure seems… excessive. The company will be missed. On the other hand, we probably won’t be rid of Embracer Group any time soon. (Lucky us.)