When PC Gamer senior editor Wes Fenlon wrote about Luna Abyss last month, he said it left him “already hoping for more of its kind.” Sadly, it doesn’t look like that will happen—the entire team that made it has just been laid off.
The news came in the form of a LinkedIn post from Kwalee Labs CEO Hollie Emery posted June 16. “The entire team has been made redundant; a decision that was completely outside of our control,” Emery said.
“As a result, the entire team is available for work as of today … Thanks for your endless support, and whilst we’re sad it ended like this—I have no doubt that our team will go on to make amazing things.” The nine affected developers are listed on the LinkedIn post, and Emery encouraged potential employers (or anyone in contact with potential employers) to reach out directly and share the post.
While Luna Abyss was celebrated critically, it appears that didn’t translate to good sales. According to SteamDB, the game has a concurrent player count of just 43 as I write this, and at its peak only ever reached 317. The bullet hell has always been niche, but Luna Abyss further tested that with a cutting-edge genre fusion. Still, the game released less than a month before all this on May 21—its chance to draw folks in was cut absurdly short.
If you’re unfamiliar with the game, it merges the bullet hell with the FPS for a unique combination of autoaim-infused blasting and pattern dodging. In his impressions, Wes said it “is proof the bullet hell FPS should be a thing … the bullet hell is more than 30 years old, but all Luna Abyss had to do to make it feel fresh was put it in first-person, robbing you of the peripheral vision Returnal is kind enough to offer.”
It’s a somber reminder that even making a great game won’t protect you from the innumerable sorts of turmoil killing jobs in the videogame industry, even as it, from a bird’s eye view, rakes in cash like never before.
