Now free to pursue your own destiny independent of Xbox, South of midnight Developer Compulsion Games is actively seeking collaborative work with other partners. But given some comments recently made by creative director David Sears, I wouldn’t be surprised if Compulsion’s next project was something very, very different from South of midnight; after all, Sears doesn’t think this game was a good business decision to begin with.
In an interview with MinnMaxBen Hanson, Sears talks at length about Xbox’s decision to fund games like South of midnight and Double Fine Guardiangames that he and Xbox knew probably wouldn’t make much money (and in fact didn’t) but would increase Xbox’s prestige or serve as cultural touchstones for generations to come. However, he also says he told people during development: “Someone is going to say, one day, ‘The money spigot, we’re turning these floodgates off.’ And this is going to have really traumatic consequences downstream.
Hanson then summarizes what he thinks Sears is saying. “So the idea is that you’re grateful that Microsoft supported South of midnight…but you wouldn’t have financed it yourself?
Sears replied, “Yeah, probably.” He continued:
I wanted to do it. Without a doubt. Obviously. Because we did it. Have I ever turned off someone else’s money flow South of midnight? Yeah. Because I’m not completely altruistic. It seems that, in hindsight, at least, it wasn’t sustainable. Of course, this was going to have a “shocking” result. It’s easy to dissect it now. But at the time, I was talking to other directors and they were like, “How is this happening? How did we get so lucky? Is this a golden age?” And I always said (he sucks air through his teeth) “For now.” And there is always a night when Rome burns. I didn’t know exactly when it would happen, but I was still worried.
Sears concludes this reflection by noting that today’s Microsoft is much “more human” than the company it knew in the ’90s, as evidenced by the fact that it let the studios break up instead of just shutting them down completely.
In addition to South of midnightCompulsion Games is also known for 2018s We are a happy fewwhich he made with Gearbox Publishing. He was acquired by Microsoft just before this release to join Xbox Game Studios and began work on South of midnightwhich was nominated for and won numerous awards following its launch in 2025, including a BAFTA. Compulsion was spun off from Microsoft as part of Xbox’s recent restructuring, taking with it all of its intellectual property and an unknown amount of financial runway. It is currently unknown whether or not the studio has signed on to a new project.
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