FAU-G Developers Ncore Games Made Significant Reductions to Its Workforce: Report

Ncore Games, the developers behind the Indian mobile game FAU-G, reportedly laid 50% of its entire workforce “a few months ago.”

The report comes from the YouTube channel Games Gossip India. IGN India has also confirmed this information with an independent source.

Meanwhile, IGN has also reached out to Ncore Games for comment.

<br />

FAU-G: Fearless and United Guards was released back in January 2021, with all the hype it could ask for after the announcement. The developer had also signed Bollywood star Akshay Kumar as the brand ambassador for the game. Indian gamers were looking at the game as their saviour, as its announcement came shortly after PUBG Mobile was banned in India.

Mobile gamers were anticipating the release of the Made in India title. Ncore Games released cinematic trailers, posters, and other promotional material to generate excitement for the launch.

However, when FAU-G was finally launched, the developers failed to deliver on the expectations of eager players across the country. One of the major let-downs was the lack of gunplay, a key feature that gamers sought at the time. The company stated that the feature was absent because it tried to be faithful to the real-life events that inspired this game. For context, it followed the 2020–2021 China–India skirmishes that occurred in Galwan Valley and nearby regions along the Sino-Indian border, where the Indian army successfully repelled the enemy forces without the use of firearms. Due to a bilateral agreement between India and China in 1996 which doesn’t allow guns in the region, Ncore Games focused on hand-to-hand combat mechanics instead.

While being a neat idea on paper, it was not something that the Indian mobile gaming market wanted. Players were, unsurprisingly, disappointed with the actual game as it did not live up to their expectations of a PUBG alternative. The developer did outline that it was wrong to claim that FAU-G was a PUBG Mobile alternative, but the name and timing did not help.

As a result, players started to review bomb the title, and currently, FAU-G sits at a low 2.3-star rating on the Google Play Store, and a 2.5-star rating on the App Store. Many complaints centred around the combat being too basic, and the enemy AI being simplistic (which also resulted in some amusing bugs).

Overall, it was not the game that players wished for at the time. FAU-G has since received an update with a multiplayer mode, but it is still in early access, with a different studio reportedly working on the game.

Ncore Games has shifted its focus to its latest project, ICC Cricket, while also receiving significant funding for Web3 titles.