Liquid Swords, the Stockholm studio set up by Just Cause creator Christofer Sundberg, has been declared bankrupt. Swedish outlet Break It reported it first, and VGC's Andy Robinson picked it up this morning.
The trigger, per Break It, is grim and familiar: staff hadn't been paid for months. The Swedish state will now step in to cover wages for the studio's roughly 30 employees, and Liquid Swords is said to be hunting for a buyer.
What happened to Samson
Samson was the studio's debut, an open-world action game that landed on Steam and the Epic Games Store back in April, then on consoles in September. It reviewed middling, and most of the complaints were about bugs. At the time Sundberg admitted the team "released a game with flaws for a number of reasons" without spelling those reasons out, and said they would keep improving it.
The warning signs were there earlier. The studio announced layoffs in February 2025, with Sundberg calling the situation deeply regrettable.
The bigger picture
Sundberg co-founded Avalanche and was creative director on the original Just Cause, so this isn't some first-timer who wandered in. A debut open-world game is an enormous swing for a 30-person team, and Samson shipping rough was probably the moment the maths stopped working. If a buyer turns up, there's a chance the game and some jobs survive. That's the best case, and it isn't guaranteed.
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