Mimimi’s Final Game
Dear community, team and industry,
It is with a heavy heart that today we have to share the news that Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew will be Mimimi’s final game.
As we look back at our 15-year journey crafting games (and crying about it), we feel grateful for the incredible love and support we received from all of you. We cherished every game we made and feel proud of what we were able to accomplish as a studio.
At the same time, dedicating the past decade and a half of our lives working on increasingly ambitious games took a heavy personal toll on us and our families. After the release of Shadow Gambit we decided it was the right time to prioritize our well-being and to pull the brakes instead of signing up for another multi-year production cycle.
While this means that we won’t start production on a new big game, we will continue to fully support Shadow Gambit. We are already working on a patch across all platforms and have a big content drop planned for later this year, which we are sure you will love just as much as we do!
This also means we will be slowly ramping down the studio over the next few months. We shared this decision with the whole team at an on-site meeting before releasing this announcement.
We will be doing everything in our power to support our team, and we are now starting to reach out to our friends in the industry to find suitable new jobs for all Mimimis. If you have open positions and are interested in hiring our amazing talents, please get in touch via hiring@mimimi.games.
Thanks to the recent launch of Shadow Gambit, we are also able to pay out a bonus to all employees to help them during their transition.
We want to thank our community and fans for playing our games and engaging with us. Your joy and support were what fueled our passion!
We want to thank our industry peers that helped us along all stages of this company, from founding it to self-publishing for the first time. Your mentoring was pivotal for our success!
We want to thank all our business partners, especially Kowloon Nights, THQ Nordic and Daedalic Entertainment, as well as all external partners and companies that have worked with us. Also, thanks to both the Bavarian regional games fund FFF Bayern and the German games grant of the BMWK. Without the funding, skills and assistance from all of you, this journey wouldn’t have been possible.
And, most of all, we want to thank the whole team and everyone who worked with us in any capacity on these games. You made Mimimi what it was!
We are now focused on delivering the additional content for Shadow Gambit and fulfilling our duties as Managing Directors of the company – to our team, our fans and our business partners, in the most supportive way we can.
And while we don’t know what the future will hold for the both of us, we still love video games.
We had a really good run and we are truly grateful for all of this!
Thank you!
Dominik and Johannes
Why is this happening?
Making these games was amazing and extremely taxing at the same time. Reaching the level of quality Mimimi strives for is hard and requires focus and dedication. We also have to acknowledge that our future production costs are growing faster than potential revenues of our genre. The increased financial pressure and level of risk became unsustainable. Additionally, whenever our games got close to release and were finally fun to play, a new fight for funding of the following projects started, making this a continuous cycle.
Since 2011 and pitching The Last Tinker, there never was any down-time for either of us.
As founders and directors, we found it increasingly difficult to strike a balance between fulfilling internal expectations for the studio and being available for our young families. Meeting our goals of quality, company culture and management requires a constant level of energy that we simply can’t provide anymore.
Ramping down the company and making Shadow Gambit our final game is an extremely tough decision. We never expected this would be how Mimimi ends. But if even one of us* were to break down, fail or burn out, the situation would escalate quickly. Ultimately, managing a production on this scale, in combination with an extremely competitive market, proved to be too taxing for us.
In light of all of the above, we decided to pull the brakes.
* Clarification: “us” meaning Dominik or Johannes.
Why not change the genre?
Working in a new genre would increase risks and stress-levels across the whole team even further. It’s already hard enough to make great Stealth Strategy games, and we are simply lacking the experience of working on other genres.
Will I still be able to buy your games in the future?
Yes. All our games will remain available on all platforms.
Didn’t you receive the German games grant for developing this game?
Yes. We are incredibly thankful for the opportunity, without which this game wouldn’t even exist. With help of the grant of the BMWK, we delivered an excellent title that you can play for many hours and which surely will be played for many years.
Developing and self-publishing this game was an amazing experience and the whole team learned a lot and achieved a milestone in their career!
Can I rent your awesome office? Can I buy your high-quality furniture and hardware?
Yes, please get in touch.
Thank you for reading and caring!