LogInThe Hazelight head shared that he was heavily indebted during the development of A Way Out before he received support from EA.
Hazelight Studio's It Takes Two has really become a hit. The game has sold over 7 million copies in just a little over a year and, taking into account that It Takes Two is exclusively a co-op game, even more players experienced the adventures of May and Cody. Although, despite today's popularity and financial success of the studio's games, not everything has always been so smooth for the studio.
In a recent interview with Swedish radio, the founder and head of Hazelight Josef Fares told about the financial difficulties that arose in the early stages of the development of the studio's debut tile, A Way Out.
Development of A Way Out began in 2014. As we know now, the project was eventually funded by EA, however, it happened only in 2016. So the first two years of development turned out to be tense for Hazelight due to difficulties with the budget.
According to Fares, the game was becoming increasingly ambitious, but there was not enough money to bring it to life. The director said that when the studio was in the middle of the development process, the A Way Out team already had lost 5 million (Fares didn't specify if he was talking about SEK or dollars).
Fares shared that this situation made him panic, and the worse thing was that he couldn't pay salaries to his team for several months after that. Desperate, Fares was even ready to sell some of his Hazelight shares (but the potential buyer turned down the offer). Luckily, the director found another way out – he started making commercials to earn money to pay salaries to his employees.
Eventually, A Way Out secured Electronic Arts' support and sold an estimated 3.5 million copies, and Hazelight's next project, the co-op game It Takes Two, achieved even bigger success and gained even greater recognition.
You can find the full interview with Josef Fares here. Please note it's in Swedish.