Omeda Studios’ Predecessor launch started with one creator’s dream | Robbie Singh interview

For every video game that gets published, there are plenty that just die on the vine. That’s just the way things are. But Robbie Singh didn’t accept that answer.

As a dedicated creator and fan, Singh was stunned when Epic Games decided to stop making its multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game Paragon. But instead of shutting it down altogether, Epic Games decided to open source its content. Singh happened to be a popular creator. And today, Singh’s Omeda Studios is formally launching Predecessor on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

Back in 2020, MOBAs were hot and Epic tried launch Paragon amid rivals like the ever-popular League of Legends. Singh, who had never made a game before, loved the title but was heartbroken when Epic decided to cancel it. He rallied the community and bought the game.

The effort turned into years of development. Singh stayed in touch with the community and brought creators in to help. The title, renamed Predecessor, went into open beta in March 2024 as the player count grew to over one million players.

Since going into open beta, the team at Omeda has been tirelessly working to improve Predecessor based on community feedback and has added a ton of new content and features, like the highly requested Ranked Mode, the fast-paced and action-packed Brawl Mode, new Heroes Terra and Aurora, new skins as well as balance changes to keep the game’s competitive spirit as fierce as ever.

Building upon Paragon’s existing visual assets, Omeda Studios overhauled the game’s maps, gameplay mechanics, characters and more for something new and improved that stays true to the heart of Paragon. Predecessor’s key features include unique gameplay with the core of a MOBA and mechanics of a third-person shooter/brawler. It has more than 35 playable characters, including 30 unique Heroes.

And it’s the only Unreal Engine 5 MOBA, with high-resolution graphics. The game has crossplay on the PC and consoles so players can always find their friends. Predecessor features a ton of rewards, including custom skins, for players to earn or purchase with in-game currency.

I spoke with Singh years ago as he started the effort and we talked once again for the launch. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: How has the game progressed?

Robbie Singh: As you may know, we’re launching our 1.0 update on August 20. That’ll be a whole host of improvements that we’ve made to the game. Since we last spoke, we spent a lot of time improving the product, iterating with the community. My background, I was an influencer. Epic shut down Paragon, but I stayed in the community and worked with the community to iterate on the game. We’ve gone through different phases of development and consistently been iterating with the community.

We feel like we’re in a good spot where we want to get more discoverability on it. We want to put it in front of more people and continue that journey, iterating on it in public like most live service games. We have a lot of improvements in the new player experience. Also a lot of things coming in for existing players. We’ll also be officially on Xbox. We were in preview, and now we’ll be officially on Xbox.

GamesBeat: How much time has passed now for the project?

Singh: We officially started in 2020. It’s been about four years. We raised capital, our first round, in 2021. That’s when we started working full time with 20-25 people. A year later we raised a $20 million round. It’s been about three years in full development. The team is about 90 people now.

GamesBeat: What was the idea back in 2020, and what is it more like now?

Singh: Back in 2020 it was very small. I think we had about five heroes. Today we’re approaching 40. We were still using all the Paragon assets that Epic released. Since then we’ve released three original characters. We’ve overhauled a lot of systems based on community feedback. We’ve introduced an affinity system, which is like a battle pass for each character. Our players really love that. We’ve added changes to the map.

When we started, and even in 2021, we didn’t have the game on console. We released the game on PS4 and PS5 and Xbox, and we’re now bringing it to both Xboxes on the 20th. We’ve made a lot of progress, from a PC-only title to a fully cross-play, cross-platform title.

GamesBeat: What was the hardest part?

Singh: I’d never made a video game before. So all of it was extremely hard. I think console development has probably been the biggest hurdle, the most challenging. When you develop on PC you can just play it as it is, in the engine. But if you want to feel how it runs on PS5, you have to go through a process. That’s a steep learning curve for someone like me. We believe that there’s a massive opportunity for this game on consoles. We see that in our metrics. Getting there was a big challenge. It’s been enjoyable, but that was definitely the hardest one.

GamesBeat: How much money did you raise altogether?

Singh: In the two rounds, $22 million.

GamesBeat: What sort of activity are you seeing in the metrics now?

Singh: I can’t remember an exact number, but I think it’s almost 2 million players, or maybe over 2 million now. The reason I say that we think it’s successful on console is that PS5 is our biggest platform, and we only launched there in March. PlayStation makes up the largest part of our user base, percentage-wise. We also see that those users are extremely engaged. They retain. They really enjoy the product. We see similar signs on Xbox, even though we’re only in a limited preview. We still see really encouraging metrics. Players on that platforms are looking for a game like this.

GamesBeat: What’s unique about it compared to other MOBA games?

Singh: We definitely lean into the third-person aspect, which is familiar to a lot of console gamers. It’s high fidelity as well. Looking at other MOBAs in the space, they don’t really have triple-A graphics fidelity. We’re also fully cross-play, cross-platform. We lean into the shooter mechanics, and again, those are quite familiar to console players. That makes for a unique recipe.

We also lean into the third-person aspect in terms of verticality. There’s a hero that’s coming out that can fly. There are heroes that make use of jumping over walls, that make use of 3D terrain. When we speak to players, the verticality is one thing they enjoy about Predecessor. It’s extremely unique. It opens up the MOBA play space in a way that hasn’t been used before.

GamesBeat: Coming from the influencer space, what did you learn about communicating with the community?

Singh: We’ve learned a lot along the way as well. As an influencer, I always thought–it was easier said than done. But why don’t game developers tell us stuff? What I learned was that, when I do it, just be as transparent as possible. We recently put out a blog to our community just telling them why we’re releasing the game, what the goals are, what we’re hoping to achieve. We try to be up-front and as honest as possible, as transparent as possible. There’s nothing we don’t share. They also have access to an API that has all the game data. Our goal is to be super transparent.

Ultimately, I was part of the community, and I want to build this game for the community. It was something we all loved. I see it as our game, not just my game.

GamesBeat: What kind of community do you see? In how they’re active and what they’re doing, what do you notice?

Singh: We have a passionate community. We’re super grateful. We have a lot of dedicated players who’ve spent thousands of hours playing Predecessor. They also engage on Discord, Reddit, YouTube, Twitch. We have a lot of passionate content creators on all platforms, but we notice a significant uptick in TikTok streamers. That’s been an interesting trend.

The community hosts their own tournaments, and they don’t just host extremely competitive tournaments. We have influencers hosting tournaments for newer players so they can tangle with more experienced players to help them get into the game. Our community really cares about growing the game, which is awesome to see.

GamesBeat: What are some of the memorable moments that people encounter in the game? What do they talk about a lot?

Singh: We see a lot of people talking about kills they got, especially when it relates to verticality. Maybe they double jumped in the air and threw a dagger, or their teammate threw them up in the air and that’s where they got a kill. We see a lot of those moments. We see a lot of pentakills that people typically want to share.

The key that I’ve noticed amongst the moments that get shared is that they’re things that wouldn’t have been possible in other MOBAs, because of the play space. Flying over walls, using verticality in some way, or shooting someone out of the sky, those are the moments that players gravitate towards and that they find exciting.

GamesBeat: Is there a way to describe what you inherited versus what you wound up releasing now? How much work had to be done?

Singh: A lot of the art from the original game was done, but it’s much more complex than that. Epic released a lot of the assets – animation, visual effects, and the meshes of characters – but we still had to design the characters. How is it going to feel? What is it going to do? What are the abilities? How do we balance that? We also redesigned some of these characters, because we felt that they didn’t fit the vision we had for our game. There was a lot of heavy lifting. It wasn’t directly drag-and-drop.

We have a vision for our game that’s not just an extension of Paragon. We have our own ideas for things we think players will love and that we want to build. We’re trying to figure out a way that, using these assets, we can stay true to our vision and make sure these characters belong in the universe we create.

GamesBeat: What happens after launch? What’s on the road map once you get that behind you?

Singh: We haven’t shared the road map just yet, but we can follow up once that’s finalized. We have a bunch of cool marketing beats following the launch, the week after. Players can join the Discord for Discord quests. Everyone can earn a free skin that we’re releasing. We have a brand new skin line coming out, the Undertow skin line, which is like undead pirates. Then we have a lot of events planned for the next few months. We just haven’t announced them yet.

We’re also consistently making improvements. We launched a ranked mode a couple of months back. Our players are really enjoying that. We’ll be monitoring player feedback from the release as well. We always want to build what our players want. We monitor socials, monitor the feedback they share with us, and include those things in our road map. We have a whole bunch of heroes releasing as well.

GamesBeat: Has anyone stood out as far as creating popular videos of the game?

Singh: A few people. There’s JoeYoursTruly. He used to work at the studio. He’s still a passionate player. We have PinzoDunzo, who streams on Twitch. There are some great guys on TikTok as well. Pap3rrrr is one of them. I just did a stream with them. Most of our community, in fact all of our community, are making incredible content. What’s really special is that they’re spending their time making content to help new players. As much as we try as developers to make a MOBA as accessible as possible, there are always things players can learn. That’s what makes them attractive. Our players are great at making guides and tips for new players. We’re super lucky to have them.

GamesBeat: What do you see as the competition for this game?

Singh: It seems like everything today is competing for people’s time. Any multiplayer competitive game is competition. We kind of compete against all of them.