Luna Abyss development team laid off weeks after launch

The entire development team behind the recently released video game Luna Abyss has been laid off, a move announced just weeks after the game's launch. In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, June 16, Kwalee Labs CEO Hollie Emery confirmed that all nine studio employees, including herself, were made redundant the previous day.

The decision was described by Emery as "completely outside of our control." No specific reason for the layoffs was provided by the studio or its parent company, Kwalee. The sudden move follows the game's release on May 21 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, where it was also available as a day-one title on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

Despite the team's dissolution, Luna Abyss had garnered a positive critical reception. The fast-paced, bullet-hell first-person shooter earned a score of 81 on the review aggregator Metacritic and held an "86% positive" rating from user reviews on Steam at the time of the announcement. Emery expressed pride in the team's accomplishment, stating they had achieved a strong review score in a difficult genre with a small team.

The studio, formerly known as Bonsai Collective before merging with publisher Kwalee and...