devtrackers.gg
Owlcat, at least originally consisted of devs from MyGames, working previously on MMO stinkers for MailRu, that has a reputation of greedy, evil corporation. But at least the Team leader has also previously worked on some bangers such as Heroes of Might & Magic 5 and Evil Islands.
So the story is that MMO devs were tired of making shitty MMOs and wanted to make good single player games. They also hired Chris Avellone as a writer, who's an rpg legend, despite allegations. Interestingly enough, MailRu was a publisher for Kingmaker as well. Only in 2019 they parted ways with their parent company, before WOTR development started. Owlcat also lost rights to Kingmaker by doing that, so buying it now is pointless, if you want to support Owlcat. But also it's not like it was a hateful breakup, since they also received funds from Mailru after going independent.. Business in Russia is weird okay.
Kingmaker had a contracted short support period lasting a few months after we've parted ways with MyGames. Those were the only funds received. All further patch development past that point was done literally for free because the game still needed updates. Unfortunately, after a certain point it became financially impossible to continue.
So not that weird after all, you can say Kingmaker was the price of our freedom :)
I looked it up recently and was shocked to find that Kingmaker was Owlcat's first game. I realize that the original launch wasn't nearly as good as it is now, but having played it years after the enhanced edition came out, I'm pretty impressed with it and Wrath of the Righteous.
I assume Owlcat is made up of vets from other companies that have long histories of great rpgs, because I don't know how else they pull something like this off. They are quickly becoming the modern version of late nineties-early aughts Bioware.
Thanks for the trust, we're trying to do our best :) The team indeed had a good handful of vets who were in the industry for many years, so they knew what they were doing. But of course we've gained a lot of experience from our own projects over these years, too.