Video Games

Deliver Us Mars developer lays off entire team

KeokeN Interactive sees itself out of options

Marco Wutz

KeokeN Interactive / Frontier Foundry

KeokeN Interactive, the development studio behind Deliver Us Mars, announced that it laid off all of its team members due to being unable to find any development work to finance the company.

“Heartbroken, we've had to lay off our team at KeokeN because of nothing substantial materializing directly after our visit to GDC. We’ve unfortunately exhausted all our possible options for publishing, work for hire, and co-development,” CEO Koen Deetman and managing director Paul Deetman explained in a joint statement.

The continued: “It is our utmost priority to make sure our lovely team finds a new home somewhere else, so if you have any positions available in Programming, Tech Art, Porting, Level Design, Audio, Animation, Production, Office Management, contact us, so that we can introduce you to the very best people who have been at the heart of KeokeN over the past 10 years.”

Koen and Paul Deetman will continue the studio and try to rebuild, saying they are “heavily beat, but far from beaten.”

“It has become abundantly clear that what is most important to us and our team is you, our community. You play our games, you make our games shine, you make us feel special as you believe in us. You have showed up consistently in both the good and the bad times, from our debut Kickstarter in the past to our recent video asking for help. Because of you, we’ve reached millions of people. We have always needed you and continue to do so.”

“Personally, we are preparing a Kickstarter soon for our much-anticipated Deliver Us Home. This is one small step for KeokeN, one giant leap for Delivering Us Home. A game we will build for you and with you,” they added.

KeokeN Interactive’s latest game is Deliver Us Mars, which was published by Frontier Foundry in 2023 as a sequel to Deliver Us the Moon. Deliver Us Mars was widely praised for its story, but a mixture of bugs, poor performance, and some tedious mechanics led to it getting only middling scores across the board.

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Marco Wutz

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg