The notorious game developer behind the American Football title NFL Clash, Nifty Games, will be closing their doors. After five years of operation, Chief Executive Officer John Middleton has announced that the company will no longer be producing future video games.
In John Middleton’s LinkedIn, the Chief Executive Officer penned an open letter announcing Nifty Games’ closure. Middleton mentions that “We take a lot of pride that Nifty Games efforts achieved the products we set out to deliver… world-class free-to-play games with two of the most iconic sports brands in the world.”
NFL Clash and NBA Clash were the most popular titles from the developers and many praised the games for being easy to pick up while encouraging fun, yet fierce competition. In addition, some fans considered it to be “gap between those who like the control of traditional games like EA’s Madden franchise with those who prefer to watch the action play out in a Football Manager sort of simulation.” Furthermore, NBA Clash received similar reviews with over one hundred thousand downloads on Google Play. Both titles were available on both Android and iOS devices.
“However, NFL Clash and NBA Clash, while widely well-reviewed, couldn’t deliver the commercial results we needed as an independent developer and publisher. There’s been significant changes in the mobile market that had an adverse effect, and ultimately forced us to downsize over the past year, sunset our games and now move towards closure of the company,” one source stated.
The closure of Nifty Games seemingly came out of nowhere considering that the company acquired a thirty-eight million dollar investment back in 2021. Led by Vulcan Capital, the company had raised twenty-six million dollars in a Series B round of equity while obtaining an additional twelve million dollars in connected debt financing. Some have attested this news to the immense hardship that independent gaming studios have in order to stay afloat in the mobile gaming space.
Nifty Games has further explained that all of their titles will no longer be available for download on any app stores with the exception of NBA Clash as its termination has yet to be specified.