You can trace the lineage of beloved games like Deus Ex, BioShock, and Dishonored directly back to Looking Glass Studios. This developer is one of the most notable in the history of the game industry, having effectively created the immersive sim genre through classics like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Thief. However, the studio's closure in 2000 wasn't really "sad," at least according to Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. It was simply a matter of economics.
"This isn't a sad day, it's an economically realistic day," Sweeney wrote on May 24, 2000. "Looking Glass spent lots of money making innovative games that never sold well." This quote recently resurfaced on social media, as gamers looking to hate Sweeney move beyond simply criticizing his mass layoffs, his bizarre jabs at Valve boss Gabe Newell, and Epic's increasingly AI-first approach to development.
Now, if I were a major industry figure who'd once written something callous about a beloved studio's demise, I think I'd do what I could to minimize the reach of that quote. I'd ignore it. If it spread too far, I'd apologize. I'd say I had grown over the course of the decades, and that I no longer believe as I once did.
Sweeney, however, retweeted his old quote today, saying "The crash in the game business nowadays is the first for the new generation of gamers, but only one of several in the history of games.
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