LogInThe game director dissed the declaration that the game is made by "Ubisoft refugees".
Sandfall Interactive
Sandfall Interactive's debut title, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, might be comparatively low-key before its release, but it has quickly become a sensation and a hot topic in the industry, with news about it appearing almost every day. Some you might have heard of: Just three days after its launch, the game sold one million copies; In roughly two weeks, it has sold over two million copies; and behind these impressive sales figures are widespread praises from both players and critics — the game has become Metacritic's highest-rated game of all time, and even the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, had congratulated the team for their creativity and achievement.
All these come from a development team that consists of a mere 34 developers, including Game Director Guillaume Broche himself and the studio dog. Broche had left Ubisoft after feeling "bored" there and founded Sandfall Interactive along with another Ubisoft alumnus, Tom Guillermin, and therefore, some had said that Ubisoft Refugees created the game.
The game director, who is about to turn 33 this month, clarified to The Washington Post that this is not the case. Instead, only three employees were from Ubisoft, which took up only 10%.
Not only is the percentage of Ubisofters quite low, but the team is "very, very young," without having many industry veterans, as Broche revealed that "most of the team are first-time developers."
Young or experienced, that doesn't seem to be a single factor that guarantees a game's success. What matters more is how the team poured their heart into it, as Broche said:
"There is a lot of joy and sincerity in how we made the game, and I think it’s something players can connect with because we have soul in this game, and it’s impossible to reproduce somewhere else without the team here. We are emptied out. There is all of us in the game, nothing left."
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