ABOVE: Edited gameplay footage from our playthrough of the forthcoming alpha.
Losing the rights to the thing you made is a surprisingly common situation in the games industry.
Obsidian Entertainment is one recent example—last year the studio released sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds after years of constant praise for Fallout: New Vegas, which it couldn’t continue. Elsewhere, Atari held the rights to Rollercoaster Tycoon, so Frontier corkscrewed right around them and made Planet Coaster. Two or three of these spiritual reboots pop up each year: Two Point Hospital, Phoenix Point, Yooka-Laylee. Further back, BioShock.
Left 4 Dead creators Turtle Rock Studios found themselves in this same license limbo over the last decade, having carried a genre-defining co-op zombie shooter to term in 2008 before passing their baby to Valve, who’s mostly slept on the franchise (there was a surprise community update in September).
In Back 4 Blood, you feel Turtle Rock’s…