Tim Morten is both an optimist and a realist.
In 2020, Morten and his business partner Tim Campbell launched Frost Giant Studios, with the goal of reinvigorating the real-time strategy genre. The new venture turned heads for both the pedigrees of its founders — Morten, who previously served as a production director at Blizzard Entertainment, helped evolve “StarCraft II” into a live service title in 2017, and Campbell spent years as the original lead campaign director for “Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne” — and for its millions of dollars in funding.
Following its August 2025 release, however, “Stormgate,” Frost Giant’s highly anticipated RTS title, struggled to live up to the hype. Plagued by performance issues and gameplay critiques, early versions of the game failed to gain traction among large numbers of RTS players. Although later patches have smoothed over the performance challenges and significantly improved the player experience, Morten said in an interview with Game Developer at Gamescom 2025 that “Stormgate’s” relatively low player count and sales figures could result in layoffs or downsizing in the near future if Frost Giant could not find new investors.
Frost Giant has not yet secured new investment, but Morten is still discussing the opportunity with interested parties — including some meetings at November’s GamesBeat Next conference in San Francisco. At the event, he also sat down with GamesBeat lead news writer Alexander Lee — that’s me — to record an episode of the BIG Show, GamesBeat’s new podcast sharing candid insights and opinions from leaders across gaming and beyond.
“It’s a very difficult situation to be in, to have a game that doesn’t reach expectations — that has a smaller-than-expected player count,” Morten said during the episode. “But the team really did this project out of passion, and there is still work going on to continue to improve the game, driven by passion.”
The episode is a wide-ranging conversation, touching on the reasons behind “Stormgate’s” underperformance, the potential future of Frost Giant Studios and Morten’s thoughts on the gaming industry’s broader trajectory going into 2026. To listen to the full chat, listen above — or click here to watch a video recording. Stay tuned for more episodes, including additional episodes recorded at GamesBeat Next and GamesBeat’s Hollywood & Gaming summit last month, as well as a full season rollout later this year.