fared worse than the team expected critically, but its commercial performance was satisfactory, selling more than 1 million copies worldwide. After working on two different licensed games, the team intended to develop its own games. A game named Kano, involving mind-reading, was started but was never completed. After the release of The Darkness, the company signed a two-project contract with Vivendi. One of the games was a new property known as Polaris. The game was set in a post-apocalyptic environment. Players were tasked to overcome snowstorms, and defeat terrorists and monsters cooperatively with other players. Vivendi was not convinced the game would succeed and adjusted the contract to a remake of Escape from Butcher Bay, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Vivendi originally named the game Riddick 2 but Starbreeze disagreed claiming the name would raise expectations among gamers that the remake might not be able to deliver. Vivendi's subsidiary Sierra Entertainment was set to publish the game. After the merger between Activision and Vivendi, the new company began streamlining Vivendi and put the game, along with Brütal Legend, and Ghostbusters: The Video Game up for sale. Atari eventually acquired the publishing rights and the game was released in 2009. Syndicate, Payday 2 and Brothers (2010–2016) Starbreeze then partnered with Electronic Arts for two different games, one was known as Project Redlime, while the other was an action-adventure video game set within the Bourne universe. The Bourne game was canceled as a direct result of Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass not participating in the fourth Bourne film. Project Redlime had a larger scale than the Bourne game. It was said to be a reinvention of one of Electronic Arts' franchises. The company shifted from a technology-orientated company to focus more on the core gameplay mechanics of their new project. Syndicate was announced in September 2011. The game suffered from a troubled development, with Starbreeze completely reworking the game one year after its initial development. There were also many creative differences between the developer and the publisher, and the two companies suffered from an inharmonious relationship. During the game's development, seven senior members of the company, including Högdahl, left to form their own smaller studio. Some of them formed MachineGames to work on their own original games. With a budget that was less than other typical AAA video games, Syndicate received average reviews and was a commercial failure.