Tribes: Ascend CEO takes to Reddit to address "misinformed conclusions" of the company and Smite's future

CEO of Tribes: Ascend developer Hi-Rez Erez Goren has taken to Reddit to address what he has called "misinformed conclusions" regarding the company, and how he hopes for the studio's new MOBA Smite to become a profitable success.

Eurogamer reports that the studio - also responsible for upcoming MOBA Smite and Global Agenda - was discussed by Goren in a sub-Reddit thread called "What will Hi-Rez do with Smite?" It follows backlash aimed at the studio for a lack of Tribes: Ascend updates and support in recent months.

He began, "Some players will look at the HiRez history of game development and arrive at misinformed conclusions, so here are more facts to help everyone understand us and the game development/publishing world. Some of the following was already posted in a post several months ago but people were nice enough to downvote it into the negative zone.

"The first and most important thing to note is that MOST games fail (remember that most people tend to remember the ones that did well), SOME games break even, and a tiny number of games are very successful. That’s the nature of the gaming industry. So for every WoW, LoL, CoD, and TF2 there are hundreds of games that are dead."

Goren conceded that Global Agenda, "lost a lot of money," and added, "It was not a total loss since we did build significant technology and platforms that would help us develop our next games (Tribes & Smite)."

Addressing the financial success of Tribes: Ascend, Goren continued, "I personally funded all the game development with over $30 million of funding (losses) and generated about $10 million in revenue (split fairly evenly between GA and Tribes) so overall we spend about $40 million running the company vs $10 million in revenue."

Turning to Smite next, Goren stressed, "Smite is very unusual. Smite is one of those rare games that’s actually growing every month, and is also profitable. This is allowing us to grow the Smite team and deliver weekly updates and content (from 15 people initially to about 80 people now). In addition, many outside publishers were interested in Smite and we are fortunate enough to have made a deal with Tencent who is the most prestigious partner we can have for our type of game.

"Given everything we know Smite should have a long and successful future which is why we are very excited as a company and continue to work our butts off to make Smite the best MOBA game in the world."

Based on what you've seen of Smite so far are you inclined to agree? Could Hi-Rez bag the true money-spinner it's been angling for all these years? Let us know below.