Immortals of Aveum's developers have found a new home in Rockstar cofounder Dan Houser’s Absurd Ventures Studio

After the failure of the fantasy FPS Immortals of Aveum a "core" team from developer Ascendant Studios found a new home with Absurd Ventures. The studio was launched in 2021, by Rockstar Games cofounder Dan Houser.

Bret Robbins, the founder and director of Ascendant Studios, will lead a new studio named Absurd Marin. Absurd Ventures' rep stated that the studio currently consists of "about 20 developers" from the core team of Immortals of Aveum, and will continue expanding as development progresses on its new game.

Houser said that Bret had assembled a team of highly talented and passionate people. "We are excited to have them join us as we start to work on one of our new original titles."

Absurd Ventures announced in November 2023 it was working on "two worlds," an audio fiction series called A Better Paradise and American Caper. The "first story" is expected to be released in 2024. Absurd Marin is working on a new project: According to the announcement, it's developing "a story-driven action adventure title set in another Absurd Universe that has not yet been announced."

It's unclear where this leaves Ascendant Studios. Ascendant laidoff nearly half of its staff less than a month following the release of Immortals of Aveum. Then, earlier this year, a week after announcing that it was "hard at working on our next project," the majority of the remaining staff were placed on furlough. Ascendant's website is still active, but the studio's twitter feed has been quiet since August 13. Prior to that, it was fairly active, tweeting about once a week. I think Ascendant has gone forever. I have contacted the studio to confirm this, but I doubt I will get a response.