
Josef Fares and team have certainly found a big niche.
One of the year’s most pleasant surprises was Hazelight’s Split Fiction, which left PC Gamer’s Fraser Brown breathless with its pace and variety: “it’s hard to imagine another game cramming so many surprises and script-flips into a single 15-hour romp.”
The studio has carved out a sizeable niche for itself with excellent co-op adventures such as A Way Out and It Takes Two, with Split Fiction very much in that lineage and proving an instant success: selling no less than a million copies in the first two days of release.
Now publisher EA has announced, as part of its latest financial results, that the game had a “hugely successful launch” and sold just under four million copies. That number was swiftly shared by Hazelight itself to confirm that, yep, it had tipped over the four million mark.
“4 MILLION SOLD!!!!” said the developer’s official account. “So many of you have picked up Split Fiction already, it’s amazing… Seeing the fun you have with our game and the love you show for Mio, Zoe and each other warms our hearts here at Hazelight. And so many hot dogs made…”
Split Fiction is apparently also being turned into a movie in conjunction with Story Kitchen, though Hazelight’s main man Josef Fares is phlegmatic about the whole thing: “I’ll believe it when I see it” says Fares of the proposed project. “There’s a lot of talks, but nothing happens.”
As for what the future holds for Hazelight now, the answer is presumably more of the same: original co-op adventures. One thing’s for sure: regardless of what EA says, Josef Fares and team won’t ever be making a live service game: “Never.”
2025 games: This year’s upcoming releases
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together