Challengers Games Announces Closure Following Repeated Failures With Anime Shooter Second Wave

Just three weeks after entering Early Access on Steam, Second Wave is shutting down – and taking its developer with it. The company's founder, who issued an apology about the game’s performance in early access and swapped the team shooter to a free-to-play model last week, posted an announcement on the site today. The announcement contains the sub-header “The Gates of Armantia and Koji Village Are Closing… For Now.”

The post itself is rather long, and a bit of a wild ride. It discusses the founding of the company itself, the many failures they suffered, the money lent to them over time, and more. While it’s interesting to see where founder Koji Tamura’s head is at, the part explaining the closing itself is at the end.

It all comes down to this. The company has a debt of about 2.4 billion won (1.7 million USD). Accounts have been seized by insurance companies. The developer is under investigation by the Ministry of Labor and Employment. And, Amazon locked the developer’s AWS account earlier this month for lack of payment – leaving them unable to push any updates.

To try to pay Amazon, the company’s founder sold off all the PCs sitting around not being used due to developers leaving, only that money was taken by the insurance companies. (If you’re wondering why developers left, it was probably not having been paid since March that did it.) So, the payment went on a personal credit card of one of the others at the company.

In the end, Challengers Games is simply unable to do business. So, the company is being dissolved. At the same time, a tentative closure date has been set for Second Wave of June 24. This will officially be decided once discussions have been had with shareholders.

Players looking for a refund for the game will need to go through Steam due to the game no longer being available.