Saints Row developer lost money on recent Red Factions

Before Saints Row took off with The Third, Red Faction was one of Volition's staple franchises. But when the studio was purchased by publisher Deep Silver in THQ's bankruptcy auction, the rights to Red Faction weren't part of the deal--just Saints Row.

Senior Producer Jim Boone told Polygon that his studio loves making games, but he realizes it's a business; open-world diamond-in-the-rough Red Faction: Guerilla and its linear sequel Armageddon "lost quite a bit of money."

"And when we lost as much money as we did with [Red Faction Guerrilla] and when we lost as much money as we did with [Red Faction Armageddon] I think you know, in our hearts we certainly love Red Faction, but at the same time it’s kind of hard to look at that business and think, you know gosh, how come we didn’t get that too."

More people at the studio are interested in making another FreeSpace, design director Scott Phillips said. Until then, the influential space sim franchise still lives on through the FreeSpace Source Code project, which continually expands and updates the code to 1999's FreeSpace 2.