Echtra Games Shut Down by Zynga | PC Games Insider

Yikes, so get this—Zynga just pulled the plug on Echtra Games. Yep, the folks who gave us Torchlight 3 are now out of a job. It’s kind of wild, really. Zynga—these guys are huge, thanks to Take-Two backing them up—said they’re “realigning.” Whatever that means, right? Anyway—oh, sorry, got sidetracked.

Echtra was the brainchild of Max Schaefer, the dude who co-created Runic Games. Remember Torchlight and its 2012 sequel? Honestly, those games rocked. Schaefer bounced from Runic in 2016 to start Echtra. And yeah, Perfect World was kind of the puppet master behind all this, putting out Torchlight 3 in 2020. Fast forward a bit, and Zynga scoops up Echtra in 2021. The deal’s number were hush-hush, by the way. But Perfect World’s still got dibs on Torchlight 3.

Now, at Zynga, Echtra was tinkering with some mystery cross-platform RPG (makes you wonder, right?) and also dabbling with CSR Racing and that Star Wars: Hunters mess. Man, I hope that game gets sorted, but anyway…

Zynga’s official word was something like, “We’re shutting Echtra down, stopping new stuff, and trimming the team.” Ouch. All part of that mysterious “strategic realignment.” Whatever, corporate-speak. They promised to handle the layoffs respectfully. Hopefully, it wasn’t the typical “Here’s your cardboard box, don’t let the door hit you.” I can’t help but hope it all works out for those folks, because saying goodbye like that is just rough.