Obsidian Entertainment was celebrated in 2025 for launching three games in a single calendar year, while some studios are taking entire console generations to get a single project out the door. However, in a rather candid and open interview, the studio’s higher-ups shared that it’s not an accomplishment they believe Obsidian should be praised for.
2025 was dubbed the Year of Obsidian by many as the studio released Avowed almost exactly one year ago, followed that up by launching Grounded 2 in early access a few months later, and then rounded out the year by giving us The Outer Worlds 2. You’d think in his interview with Bloomberg that Obsidian would be celebrating an incredibly productive year as it is showered with praise, but it was quite the opposite.
Releasing Three Games In One Year Means Things Went Wrong, Not Right
Josh Sawyer, who has been with Obsidian for years, admitted that releasing three games in one year wasn’t the plan. In fact, the team feels that this came as a result of mistakes, bad planning, and longer-than-anticipated development cycles.
The Outer Worlds 2 Just Edges Past Fallout: New Vegas’ Reviews
Obsidian’s third big game of the year is here, and it looks like another success story.
“Spacing those releases helps the company manage its resources and not burn everybody out,” Sawyer explained. “It’s not good to release three games in the same year. It’s the result of things going wrong.” The three games all being ready during the same calendar year wasn’t Obsidian trying to show the rest of the games industry how it’s done; it was an unfortunate coincidence that led to unwanted stress, and seemingly two of the three games underperformed due to their inflated costs and development time.
Grounded 2 Was The Only Game Released By Obsidian In 2025 That Met Expectations
By the time Avowed was ready to be released, it had been in development for almost seven years, starting life as a multiplayer game that wound up getting scrapped two years in. Due to the success of The Outer Worlds in 2019, which sold five million copies, work on a sequel began almost immediately, meaning it had been in the works for six years by the time it launched last year.
Grounded 2 was the only game of the three that had the kind of development cycle the team will now strive harder for at Obsidian after what happened last year. The cost needed to develop games for six or seven years means the only game of the three Obsidian released in 2025 that has managed to meet the studio’s expectations is Grounded 2. Exact figures weren’t shared, but as of now, it sounds like Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 didn’t sell as well as Obsidian might have needed them to.
Obsidian also had less time to hype each of its games as they were still focused on the title that had just launched with each upcoming release. The studio was still working on Avowed on the approach to Grounded 2, and then working on both Avowed and Grounded 2 when it was time to launch The Outer Worlds 2. Studio head Feargus Urquhart has said the goal moving forward is for Obsidian’s games to have development cycles of around three to four years, much like Grounded 2, not only to keep costs down, but to make sure there isn’t another unwanted Year of Obsidian six years from now when the studio is forced to release three games in the space of 12 months.
- Released
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October 29, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Strong Language
