Luna Abyss, a shooter that launched to critical acclaim just weeks ago, has been shelved along with its nine-person development team. The studio behind the game, Kwalee Labs, announced the layoffs through a LinkedIn post from CEO Hollie Emery, who framed the decision as unavoidable and beyond the studio's control.
The timing is brutal. Luna Abyss sits at an 81 on Metacritic and earned praise for its challenging gameplay and polished mechanics during multiple preview periods. IGN highlighted the game's difficulty and sleek design ahead of its release earlier this year. Critical reception, however, failed to translate into player adoption. The game peaked at 317 concurrent players on Steam, a significant underperformance for a title priced at $29.99 across PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
The development effort spanned seven years. The team began work on Luna Abyss in 2019 and had maintained momentum through 2023, when early previews signaled a promising future. That optimism never materialized in the marketplace.
The shutdown arrives as gaming studios face a brutal summer of cost cuts. Bungie is preparing for substantial layoffs as Destiny 2 enters a wind-down phase. Multiple Xbox studios, including Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Double Fine, are currently negotiating independence from Microsoft, though significant staff reductions are expected regardless of the outcome.
Author Emily Chen: "Seven years of work, critical validation, and it still doesn't matter when the player numbers don't show up, which is the harsh math studios face right now."
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