Liquid Swords Is Closing: Samson Did Far Better on Console, and It Wasn’t Enough

Liquid Swords is closing. Christofer Sundberg — co-founder of Avalanche Studios and creator of Just Cause — confirmed it himself on X on October 19, in the plainest possible terms. Sundberg wrote: "Liquid Swords is closing. Samson did far better on consoles, but it wasn't enough to save the studio. I'm proud of our team and what we built. We're discussing continued support for Samson. We make mistakes, we learn, we rise, we move on. I never give up. More soon." GameSpot reported the confirmation as it landed, after bankruptcy reports had already begun circulating in Sweden.

Read that statement again, because it contains the whole story in miniature. The console version worked. Players on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S showed up in meaningfully greater numbers than PC players had. And it still was not enough. That is not a story about a game nobody wanted. It is a story about how thin the margin has become for an independent studio shipping one ambitious game, in one of the most crowded genres there is, with no second title and no catalogue behind it.

One game, two launches, two different answers

Samson is an open-world crime game set in the fictional city of Tyndalston, built around a debt story: Samson owes dangerous people money, his sister is the leverage they hold, and the player earns his way out through driving, brawling and whatever work pays. It launched first on PC in April 2026, and the PC launch was rough — Destructoid, in its report of the closure, notes the game settled at a 51 average on Metacritic and describes a release held back by bugs and repetitive missions, with a Steam peak of 2,722 concurrent players. The studio patched, communicated, and kept working.

The console editions arrived in September 2026, a month ago, and by Sundberg's own account they performed far better — Gamereactor, reporting the closure on October 20, puts it the same way: the game did much better on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S than on PC, and the stronger performance still could not keep the studio open. There is a hard lesson in that sequence for mid-size developers. The audience the game was always going to fit best — console players, controller in hand, looking for a story-driven crime game — found it in September. But a studio does not get to bill September's improvement against April's costs retroactively. The money had already been spent, and the bills were already due.

The human cost, stated plainly

Behind the closure is a bankruptcy, and behind the bankruptcy are people who were not paid. According to the report cited by GameSpot and summarised by Gamereactor, all 27 employees at Liquid Swords are being let go as part of the bankruptcy process. Workers reported going unpaid for two months; those wages are to be covered under Swedish law, through the state wage guarantee. Swedish outlet Breakit reported the payroll trouble as the employees' own bankruptcy petition brought the situation into the open.

It matters to say this part without varnish. Twenty-seven people built a studio's only game, shipped it twice, patched it, supported it — and spent its final two months working without pay while its fate was decided. The Swedish wage guarantee means they are not simply abandoned, which is more protection than studio closures in many countries offer. But a guarantee cheque is not a job, and "the console version did far better" is cold comfort if you were let go before it could matter. When Sundberg writes "I'm proud of our team and what we built," that is the team he is talking about.

The studio that tried to do it differently

What makes this closure sting a little more than most is what Liquid Swords said it was for. The studio described itself as "zero-nonsense": Sundberg argued that game development had become full of distractions that hurt quality and motivation, and his ambition — as GameSpot recounts from the studio's founding pitch — was to change that by eliminating crunch and useless meetings, and by not taking on unnecessary stakeholders. Samson was to be the proof of concept: a focused game, made by a veteran team, without the bloat.

You can hold two thoughts about that at once, and honestly, you should. The ethos was real, and by most accounts the working culture matched it. The ethos was also never a business model. Zero-nonsense meetings do not pay a Stockholm payroll when your one game underperforms on its first platform, and a no-crunch studio still has to survive the same market as everybody else. Sundberg, to his credit, is not hiding behind the philosophy or the market alone: in his longer statements around the closure he has pointed to market conditions and to bad business decisions, his own included. That candour is rarer in closure statements than it should be.

What happens to Samson now

The open question is the game itself, and the honest answer is that it is not settled. Sundberg says the team is discussing continued support for Samson with the parties involved — and that is all anyone has actually said. No buyer, partner or support arrangement has been announced. Gamereactor's report frames it the same way: the game's next steps are tied to discussions that are still ongoing. Players who bought Samson on console last month — the players who, by Sundberg's account, showed up in the greatest numbers — deserve a straight answer eventually, and right now there isn't one. Anyone claiming otherwise is guessing.

Samson will remain Liquid Swords' only release. The studio Sundberg founded after Avalanche, staffed with veterans and built around a deliberate rejection of how big games are usually made, shipped one flawed, ambitious crime game and ran out of road a month after its best launch. Sundberg's closing line in that same X post — "We make mistakes, we learn, we rise, we move on. I never give up" — works as a founder's sign-off, it is defiant. As an epitaph for 27 jobs, it is also a reminder of how little defiance counts for against a balance sheet. The industry keeps saying it wants more studios like Liquid Swords tried to be. This week is what happens, too often, to the ones that try.