Innovative Bot Colony game pulled — cost $2M-$3M to make but only brought in $10,000

It’s not easy making games.

Canadian developer North Side pulled the plug yesterday on its pioneering PC adventure game Bot Colony, with lifetime sales of just 814 copies. Bot Colony used North Side’s own natural language understanding (NLU) technology to let players have realistic conversations with A.I. robots. But PC gamers weren’t interested enough in the innovative tech for it to turn a profit — in fact, the game has cost North Side millions of dollars. With Sega also closing its once legendary San Francisco office earlier today, this is yet another example of the perilous nature of the gaming industry.