Reigns, Card Shark Dev Is Closing Down As Leads Go Independent Again: ‘I Still Have Things That I Can Say’

After nearly 13 years and 11 games, Reigns developer Nerial is shutting down.

Why? It’s complicated, says creative director and founder François Alliot. It’s not just the usual story of the industry being awful and scary and money being tight. Well, that’s part of it. But it’s also a bit more personal.

© Nerial

Nerial’s first game, Reigns, was a massive success at its 2016 launch. Inspired by Tinder, it was one of a very small handful of mobile games that really broke through into mainstream game discussions, both for its snappy strategy gameplay and its wry humor about power, money, and mortality. It was so well-received that it sparked several spinoffs, including licensed variations on the game themed around Game of Thrones and The Witcher. 

Reigns did very well for Nerial…a decade ago. And it’s not that the studio’s been unsuccessful since. But its more recent releases, Card Shark and Crush House, were less lucrative, and their reception has led Alliot to “step back and rethink what I want to do with my indie career.”

“It’s become a bit difficult to push forward, especially with the current context, with post-COVID, there’s a bit of this crash in the video game industry that everyone knows. AI sucking out all the air from the room. So we are rebuilding, trying to rebuild strong roots. And for that, I need to take a step back.”

What Alliot wants to do with that step back, it turns out, is make games. Still. But even apart from the finances of it all, he’s found himself caught up in doing a lot of things that aren’t purely him being creative. For instance, Nerial was purchased by Reigns publisher Devolver Digital in 2021. He says he’s happy with how their relationship has gone, and that the closure of Nerial was a mutual decision. But Alliot also seems like he’s ready to make games that can, but don’t necessarily have to be, Devolver games.

“Having been bought by Devolver, you become an internal studio,” he says. “So that means each of our games needs to be a Devolver game. And Devolver needs to publish all Nerial games, which it did match very well for Reigns, it did match very well for Card Shark, for example. So there is this common ground and we would have found a way. But it’s like, every time we have to think about what the other wants. And there’s a bit of a second guessing. I recognize this situation, where you lose a bit of the concentrated energy that you had as a pure indie. And I want to get back to that in some way…And it might work, might not work, but it doesn’t involve so many people.”

As a part of this, Devolver is keeping the rights to all of Nerial’s existing catalog, and Alliot says he’s happy to let them have it. Alliot has already said everything he can say with those games. He also notes they are “very good friends,” and that if Devolver wants to do a Card Shark 2 or another Reigns or something like that, he’s confident they’ll contact him first. Plus, he gets to keep his prototypes, which is what he really wants right now anyway.

Nerial consists of nine people: Alliot and his wife, Tamara, will continue making games together. But seven other individuals are being let go as a part of this shuttering. Alliot says he hopes to be able to continue to work with them as contractors in the future, but isn’t currently in a position to retain them as salaried employees. He asked me if he could specifically shout all seven of them out:

“There’s Helen O’Dell, who is the Reigns artist, amazing artist. There’s AJ Kerr, the producer. Gordon [Speirs], Ben Obikoya, and Neil Goodman, developers, very good developers. Gordon and Neil in particular have 30 years of experience in the game industry, and they are very, very good. Oscar Harrington-Shaw, the writer of Reigns: The Witcher, because I stopped writing Reigns after Beyond. Couldn’t anymore. But he’s a very good writer. And then Neil Bull, our designer, who is doing a good job too. So these people are amazing, and they did a great job for us.”

Alliot himself says he’s hoping to “breathe” a bit after the hustle of running a studio. He’s been going to art museums like the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay almost every day, in hopes of inspiration. His next project, perhaps, will have something to do with art.

I point out that the current moment is a tough time to cut himself and eight others loose, what with games investment drying up and so many other people adrift and jobless out there. He’s not worried about himself, personally, but he agrees that it’s harsh right now:

“I feel there’s a very, very rapidly changing landscape of games at the moment. And particularly this thing [about AI] where we see original concepts being copied within a day and having like thousands of iterations around them on Steam. This is getting quicker and quicker…The idea is that when we bring a new project, we bring something new. [We bring] a new experience, a new angle on something that’s known…so if you can copy that within a day, that becomes a bit worrying for me. I think we’re still processing these changes. I don’t know how long it’s going to take. I suppose it’s going to take a few years. I hope we come out of this better.

“I don’t know, but at the moment, you feel like you’re in the washing machine and it’s turned on and you’re like, ‘Well, oh my God, this is going so fast.’ I’m not particularly worried facing that as an indie. I still have things that I can say and I can create that will be new and different and bring a new voice. And hopefully people will recognize that.”