Soulbound Studios Spent Nearly $7 Million On Chronicles Of Elyria In Just Three Years

Running a video game development studio is obviously a very daunting task, especially if you’re a small startup studio. Over the past few years, we’ve seen multiple studios fail to rise to the challenge, but probably none as controversial as Soulbound Studios.

The closed down shortly after the demo’s release, laying off all of its staff, and stopping all development on the ambitious MMORPG with no refunds given to backers.

Backers promptly dismissed back in October 2022.

Walsh is now trying to defend the studio’s expenses with a breakdown of how they managed to spend $ 7 million between 2017 through 2019. He explained that he chose that period because he was still forming the studio from 2015 to 2016 and had been operating with a skeleton crew and paying legal fees from 2020 to the present.

“I wanted to give current and future business owners – particularly game developers – an understanding of the actual and hidden costs of running a small game studio (avg. 17 employees),” Walsh wrote in his latest dev blog. “Very few such breakdowns exist, so I hope this proves to be a valuable resource for others.”

Walsh said that crowdfunding campaigns have “plenty of unexpected gotchas” including copyright renewal fees and taxes. Crowdsourced funds are apparently considered as payments and revenue rather than investment capital funds. He also warned aspiring developers and development studios about the costs of medical insurance for employees and payroll taxes and expressed regrets about not having gotten liability insurance for the studio.

“[…] Perception is more powerful than reality, especially in the game industry. And for better or worse, in the United States, people can sue you for just about anything they can convince a lawyer to sue you over,” he explained.

While the post is definitely informative, especially for future indie studios, it also seems like it was written to garner sympathy and from the video game community and the game’s backers who have yet to get the game that they paid for.