Samson Developer Liquid Swords Bankrupt Six Months After Launch

The Stockholm District Court issued a bankruptcy order against Liquid Swords, the Swedish studio behind Just Cause co-founder Christofer Sundberg’s debut game Samson, on Monday October 12, 2026, Swedish news site Breakit reported (via Kotaku and Insider Gaming). The studio’s roughly 30 employees have not been paid since August, and the bankruptcy trustee has put Liquid Swords and its assets up for sale.

Sundberg co-founded Avalanche Studios, the Swedish studio behind the Just Cause series, and was creative lead on the first four Just Cause games before launching Liquid Swords in 2020. Samson, the studio’s first and only title, shipped on Steam on April 8, 2026, with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions following on September 21. It sits at 51 on Metacritic, with critics and players citing a long list of bugs and performance issues at launch, which Sundberg called “unacceptable” in a Steam apology letter.

The administrator assigned to the bankruptcy, Cirio Law, has listed the studio, its intellectual property and any unsold inventory for sale. The bidding window closes on October 21, 2026, after which there should be a clearer picture of Samson’s future and whether a new owner will keep updating it. Sundberg and Liquid Swords have not publicly addressed the bankruptcy on the studio’s social accounts.

We cross-checked the date math: Samson launched April 8, 2026, and the bankruptcy order was issued October 12, 2026. That gap is 187 days, just over six months. The Kotaku and Insider Gaming reports both round to “six months after release.” The Breakit report dated October 15 is the primary Swedish source for the unpaid-salary claim. Cirio Law, a Stockholm-based insolvency firm, routinely publishes estate notices in Swedish business registries. That is how the order became public before any studio statement.

Liquid Swords was unusual in raising its profile through Sundberg’s Avalanche pedigree and shipping a single self-funded project. There was no publisher deal. Without a backer, a 51-Metacritic launch and slow post-launch fixes appear to have run the studio out of runway before the September console release could lift sales. The pattern fits a wider stretch of October studio news on Pixel Herald: Funcom restructured around its survival titles and ousted CEO Rui Casais on Oct. 16, Jagex cancelled RuneScape Reignited 12 days before launch on Oct. 15, and Bulkhead publicly admitted to a fumbled WARDOGS Season 2 in our Oct. 16 coverage. Three different reasons, same direction: more games are being cancelled, scaled back or wound down than are launching with stable teams behind them.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report