Update: Liquid Swords founder Christofer Sundberg has confirmed the studio is "closing its doors" in a lengthy post on LinkedIn. Sundberg said he tried everything to make the venture succeed but noted the studio's debut project, Samson, failed to deliver enough sales. His full statement is below:
Liquid Swords is closing its doors. I’ve done everything I can to make this succeed, and I’m very proud of what we achieved together.
It’s been a hell of a ride and a lot of fun, even when the circumstances gave us very little to laugh about. Building a studio, creating Samson and releasing it on PC and consoles took an enormous amount of work from people who cared deeply about what we were making.
The console versions met with much greater success than the PC release. We got them out, but that success wasn’t enough to get the company across the finish line. Market conditions and some bad business decisions brought us here, and I own my part in that. I can look honestly at what went wrong and still be proud of what we built.
We’re also in discussions with all parties involved in Liquid Swords about how we can continue to support Samson the way the game deserves. There’s nothing to announce on that yet, but it’s something we’re working to resolve.
To everyone who worked at Liquid Swords, our partners and everyone who supported us and played Samson: thank you. You gave us plenty of reasons to keep fighting, and the work we did together deserves to be remembered for more than how the company ended.
We make mistakes, we learn, we fall, we rise up, we move on. That’s sometimes a painful process, especially when it affects people you care about, but I refuse to give up. I never give up.
I’ll be back at it again soon and will share more about my plans for a new studio. It will be built with the current market in mind, with a solid foundation and business decisions that give the games and the people making them room to succeed. The lessons from Liquid Swords will be part of how I build it.I still love making games.
Original story: Samson developer Liquid Swords has been declared bankrupt snd is selling off key assets to the highest bidder.
Preliminary bidding documents published online by Swedish business law firm Cirio—which is overseeing the process—explain Liquid Swords was declared bankrupt by the Stockholm District Court on October 12, 2026.
It's stated the studio's debut title, Samson, has sold roughly 151,900 copies across PlayStation, Xbox Series X | S, and Steam since launching in April 2026, generating aggregate net revenue of around SEK 24.1 million as of October 14, 2026.
The paperwork notes that Liquid Swords currently has 27 employees "who will be dismissed from their positions a part of the bankruptcy."
"Employment contracts do not transfer with the business, and a takeover of staff requires that a buyer enter into new employment contracts with each employee, taking into account any applicable right of re-employment in connection with a business transfer," reads the document.
Liquid Swords was established in 2020 by former Avalanche Studios co-founder and Just Cause creative director Christofer Sundberg. The company's debut project, Samson, launched on Steam in April to mixed reviews before hitting console platforms in September. It is described in the documentation as "an action game with a strong visual identity and clear market potential."
Liquid Swords intends to continue operating during the bankruptcy process to "maintain current values of the business assets and to sell the business as a going concern." That includes continuing to support Samson with patches and fixes.
Interested parties have been invited to submit indicative bids for the business as a whole or individual assets by October 21, 2026, at 12:00 CEST.
The assets up for grabs include intellectual property rights, domain names, source codes and other development material (much of which relates to Samson), office equipment, servers, computers, and more.
Vertical Slice has reached out to Liquid Swords and Cirio for more information.
Chris is an award-winning reporter with over a decade of experience covering the video game industry. He was formerly news editor at Game Developer and is currently the founder and editor of this resplendent website.
