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Microsoft greenlit the production of this new type of Fable game. It would be a game as a service, and it would be free-to-play - a decision that was taken early but would be kept secret from the public until February 2015 because of nervousness about how the business model would be received.

Lionhead had never built a game as a service or a free-to-play game before. It simply didn't have the expertise. In the post-Molyneux era, the studio had to reinvent itself. After Fable Legends became Lionhead's next game, the studio went about changing the skill-set of its staff. People with experience of monetisation and back end services and competitive game design were hired in a bid to help the studio with the transition. John Needham, who had worked on the Marvel Super Hero Squad Online MMO at Gazillion, and the Champions Online MMO and the Star Trek Online MMO at Cryptic, became head of the studio. David Eckelberry, who had worked as a consultant on multiple mobile game titles for Gree, was brought in as creative director. The idea was to "pivot". Internally, staff would say this was the beginning of Lionhead 2.0.


"It was about moving our culture away from the previous Lionhead culture, which was around an auteur at the helm," ex-studio director Stuart Whyte says.