Liquid Swords, the Swedish studio behind the GTA-like game Samson, has been ordered into bankruptcy six months after release, leaving nearly 30 developers unpaid and the title’s future unclear.
The Stockholm District Court issued a bankruptcy order against Liquid Swords on October 12, 2026. The firm’s court-appointed administrator has already put the developer and its assets, including Samson, up for sale, with the bidding window set to close on October 21.
Kotaku reported the collapse after Swedish outlets Breakit and Gametalk detailed the court action. What began as a high-profile open-world release has ended in a fire sale, unpaid staff, and no public explanation from leadership.
Samson hit Steam on April 8, 2026. Reviews were rough. The game landed a 51 percent Metacritic score, with players and critics hammering bugs and poor performance.
Founder and COO Christofer Sundberg posted a Steam apology letter. He called the launch state “unacceptable” and promised fixes for “game-breaking bugs and performance issues.”
Several updates followed. The studio still pushed Samson onto PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series on September 21. A Steam update arrived as recently as October 8, just four days before the bankruptcy order.
Meanwhile, the roughly 30 developers on the team had reportedly gone unpaid since August. The company kept working “over the past two months,” per reporting, even as paychecks stopped.
Liquid Swords and Sundberg have seemingly said nothing about the bankruptcy on their social media accounts.
Sundberg co-founded Avalanche Studios and oversaw development of all four Just Cause games before launching Liquid Swords in 2020. Samson was the new studio’s big swing: a GTA-style open-world title meant to carry that action pedigree forward.
It did not. Shipping a broken product, apologizing, then expanding to consoles while payroll lapsed is not a sustainable business model. Swedish court records now treat the company as insolvent. Cirio Law, the assigned administrator, is marketing the studio and Samson itself to any buyer willing to bid before October 21.
Whether a buyer keeps the servers up, funds more patches, or shelves the game remains unknown. Reporting makes plain that future updates are still up in the air.
Close to 30 developers carried the project through a weak PC launch, a console port, and late patches. They have gone without pay since August while leadership stayed quiet after the court order.
That sequence is the story. A studio with a known founder shipped an unfinished game, papered over the reception with promises, expanded platforms, and then landed in bankruptcy court with staff already months behind on wages. Assets are now on the block. The people who built the product are left waiting.
Markets and courts eventually price in failure. The bill arrived six months after Samson’s Steam debut, and the developers were already footing part of it.
