Lords of the Fallen was a child of the Deck13 Interactive and CI Games cooperation. It was released in October 2014 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows and managed to gather mixed or average reviews with the critics score of 73 on PS4. Shortly after the release of Lords CI Games announced that Deck 13 (which launched The Surge last year) won't return to produce the sequel.
Lords of the Fallen 2 was announced on December 18, 2014 and was set to be released in 2017. CI Games was supposed to take on development duties, but the rather poor reception and sales of Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 successfully killed this plan as the Polish developer decided to make games with a smaller and leaner development team, as per its new direction announced in June 2017.
Lords of the Fallen 2 is being made by Defiant Studios. “We talked to a number of globally respected studios that had shown a strong interest in making the next LotF, and received several solid pitches. We finally decided to move forward with Defiant because we were impressed with their game concept, production expertise, and the pedigree of their developers,” said CI Games Chief Executive Officer, Marek Tymiński. “Defiant is made up of some the industry’s most talented creators, and we are thrilled to have them create the sequel to LotF. We look forward to bringing their next big game to the global market on consoles and PC.”
Defiant is an independent AAA studio founded in New York City in 2016 by industry veterans (including Just Cause 3's director) with many decades of experience in designing, building and producing large-scale games for a global audience. As for the studio who created Lords Of The Fallen in the first place, Deck13, they’re currently working on The Surge 2. They expect to launch the sequel in 2019.