Sun Sets on Sunset Developers, Tale of Tales

Sunset, the recently released indie darling from Tale of Tales, which created indie arthouse titles like The Path, and The Graveyard, has failed to meet sales expectations. As a result, the development house, which is headed by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, is set to shut down. 

A blog written by the duo details a postmortem of their company and why they believe their latest game, Sunset, failed. The duo claims that the title was designed with a desire to reach wider audiences than any of their previous endeavors, motivated not "by a need for money but by a feeling of moral obligation." 

To this end, the studio "spent a lot of money on a PR company who got us plenty of press" and took our advertisement on a website "where we figured the people most interested in Sunset would be gathered." According to the studio, neither activity had any effect whatsoever on the game's sales. The game sold 4,000 copies and caused the company to close its doors. 

An excerpt from the blog reads as follows: 

We studied successful games and applied our findings to the design of Sunset. And while the inclusion of certain conventions seems to have helped some people enjoy the game, it didn’t affect the size of our audience much.

We spent a lot of money on a PR company who got us plenty of press, took some work and worries off our shoulders, and found us other marketing opportunities. But it didn’t help sales one bit.

We even took out an advertisement on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, where we figured the people most interested in Sunset would be gathered. They must all use AdBlock because that had no effect whatsoever.

We worked hard on presenting a gentler Tale of Tales to the public. Which basically meant that Michaël was forbidden to talk in public and Auriea often just smiled at the camera, parroting words whispered in her ears by communication coaches. Didn’t make a difference.

So now we are free. We don’t have to take advice from anybody anymore. We were wrong. Everybody whom we consulted with on Sunset was wrong.

What do you think caused the game to fail?