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Unknown 9: Awakening developer Reflector Leisure has deemed its first recreation as a failure and has canceled a future mission, leading to layoffs.
“This resolution correlates straight with the failure of the studio’s formidable and brave first mission, a brand new IP with a wealthy transmedia universe,” mentioned Reflector Leisure CEO and Bandai Namco Europe CCO Herve Hoerdt in a statement on LinkedIn. “The efficiency of the discharge did not come close to the corporate expectations, after quite a few timeline changes and investments, each financially and different, and did not warrant any additional exploration on this universe.”
Reflector Leisure will now undertake a single-project strategy for the foreseeable future, and a few workers can be reassigned to a different current Bandai Namco IP. Hoerdt mentioned that the studio’s beforehand deliberate future mission was canceled as a result of it would not be sustainable, and that call will result in layoffs. Those that are impacted by layoffs will obtain severance packages and prolonged well being advantages.
Unknown 9: Awakening was launched on October 17, 2024, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Collection X|S to combined evaluations on GameSpot’s sister website, Metacritic, sitting at an average score of 59. It is an action-adventure recreation following a younger girl from India named Haroona. The sport was alleged to be half of a bigger content material universe, known as the Unknown 9 Storyworld, however now progress on the universe has halted.
Whereas Reflector Leisure is not utterly shutting down, different studios have not been as fortunate. Three studios have already closed in January 2025, together with Godfall developer Counterplay Video games.