Dark Souls clone, Lords of the Fallen, originally received mixed reviews and there was a question mark above a possible sequel for a while. It eventually happened, but CI Games decided to enlist the aid of Defiant Studios for the project.
Lords of the Fallen came in 2014 when everyone was so high on Dark Souls craze, introduced a game with similar combat and hoped it would sell like hotcakes. The strategy partially paid off, and it would most likely make Deck 13, CI Games and Square Enix a mountain of cash if the game wasn't riddled with issues such as myriad of bugs and glitches as well as problems with the staple of the sub genre - the combat system.
In the end, Lords of the Fallen managed to sell about two million copies which warranted a sequel, this time developed by CI Games. The sequel's development subsequently ran into troubles which resulted in the game being pushed away from its original 2017 release. It now seems these troubles resulted in CI Games getting benched and the game got itself a new developer. And I mean "new" literally.
Defiant Studios was founded in 2016, but it had a few industry veterans to its name. The studio was started by several developers who previously worked on Just Cause series as they were employed by Avalanche studios.
According to CI Games, they were with several development studios but they decided to go with Defiant as CI Games found themselves impressed with the studio's "game concept, production expertise and the pedigree of their developers". CI Games also confirmed that the game will be released for PC and consoles in a side note of the same statement.
Deck13
On top of Lords of the Fallen 2, Defiant Studios are also working on a yet unannounced shooter game, with the working title "Tactical Shooter" which they claim will be a "groundbreaking original for next generation platforms". Did they just spoil PlayStation 5 and future Xbox reveals?
