Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival has been a smash hit, says Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch in a post on LinkedIn, and it’s the first of a “series” of releases from the studio that will improve how it makes games in the future.
Hellraiser: Revival has proven to be a smashing success, in spite of — or, perhaps because of — its super-spicy content. The game doesn’t skirt around the sex, blood, and gore that defined the source material, causing some content creators to get permanently banned despite taking pains to censor their playthroughs.
In an October 19 LinkedIn post, Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch praised the Hellraiser development team, revealing the title has been performing “extremely well on PC and console” since its October 8 release.
He also speculated that AAA titles with massive budgets and lengthy development timelines won’t be sustainable in the industry for much longer (if, indeed, they are right now), instead positing that AA games based on established IPs with smaller budgets are likely a more realistic path forward.
“The game is testament to the notion that an established IP and solid AA development with controlled costs can produce great results and high user scores,” he wrote. “I believe a greater focus on these middle-market IP-driven products, rather than AAA behemoths, is the future to maintaining growth and momentum in the game industry.
“While I believe there will always be a place for the properly-developed and budgeted AAA experience, a AA game that provides a great immersive experience for a lower price is less risky and can provide much greater returns on average.”
Karch went on to say that Hellraiser: Revival is “the first in a series of releases by Saber that will continue to prove out our methodology,” teasing that there’s “more to come in just a few short weeks.”
While IGN scored the game a six out of ten, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival boasts a “very positive” player score on Steam, and has earned no small amount of praise from content creators who showed up in droves to broadcast the game on release.
Of course, given its content, it’s no surprise that some streamers got the ban hammer — but, according to its developers, that’s exactly what they were aiming for when they made it.
“It was an unofficial goal of the team to be banned, unrated, or restricted at least somewhere in the world as one barometer of whether we’d done our jobs right,” narrative director Antony De Fault told IGN in an exclusive interview.
Even Clive Barker himself was impressed, saying he was “fearful at one point that the game would be overly censored but I’m genuinely astonished by how far they’ve been able to push it.”
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.