From Dead Cells to reinventing retro IP: The untold story of Evil Empire
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Dead Cells has officially sold over ten millions copies.
The milestone was announced today, and crowns six years of ongoing support for the indie hit that initially released in Early Access in 2017.
The title has had a string of successful DLC since its original launch, the latest one being Return to Castlevania, in partnership with Konami.
While the game's success has been largely covered, less prominent is the fact Motion Twin handed the reins to another developer after the first DLC in 2019.
The studio, which is run as a cooperative, has been vocal in the past about wanting to remain small after the roguelike's success. Supporting Dead Cells in the long run would mean growth in a more traditional sense than what Motion Twin envisioned for its co-op structure. And that's where the idea for Evil Empire came from.
Co-founded by CEO Steve Filby (Motion Twin's former co-CEO and head of business development), COO Benjamin Laulan, creative director Joan Blachere and CTO Thomas Pfeiffer (also former Motion Twin), Evil Empire became the place to do "everything the [Dead Cells] devs didn't actually want to do – which turned out to be actually quite a lot," Filby laughs.
And it might have felt a bit like history repeating itself for Filby as this is exactly what he did when he first joined Motion Twin.
"I joined the video games industry in 2014 at Motion Twin directly, before we actually started working on Dead Cells," he tells GamesIndustry.biz. "I came on as the marketing and the 'do everything that devs don't want to do' guy, in a workers cooperative, which was a very diverse role, because there's lots of things you need to do. And so I've
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