Last year, Spanish game studio Tequila Works announced it was insolvent, and closing, even after prior staff cuts and the cancellation of an unannounced project.
This month a page appeared on the European auction site Escrapalia that lists the various intangible assets of Tequila Works—its videogame IPs, in-development titles, and the studio’s brand. The high bids for most of the published game rights, such as Rime and the once-Stadia-exclusive Gylt, are between 10-20,000 euro at press time.
Also included are unfinished games with playable vertical slices: The Ancient Mariner, an open world game, Dungeon Tour, a co-op party game, and Brawler Crawler, a multiplayer brawler with a procedurally generated world. There are also concepts for “4 original Tequila Works projects” that are billed as “ready for production” since their creative, narrative, visual elements, and copyright are all lined up.
It’s an inevitable consequence of the industry, but a middle-tier, independent publisher-developer like this doesn’t always go out in such a direct and public way: In my experience they’re more often acquired by a larger publisher and quietly shuttered years later. Though that scenario isn’t too far off from what happened here—Tequila Works’ majority shareholder was Tencent, as of 2022.
Not surprisingly absent from the auction is Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story, which Tequila Works developed for the League of Legends juggernaut’s now-defunct Riot Forge label.
Late last year, Tequila Works general manager Térence Mosca said in a statement that he was “proud” of the Tequila Works team’s accomplishments, but that “prolonged market conditions” meant insolvency was the company’s only choice.
“Since its founding in 2009, Tequila Works’ game-development philosophy has always focused on ‘creating things with gusto’,” said the company’s statement. “We are doing everything we can to provide support and guidance to our teams during this difficult time.”
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