Update: Following Hyenas’ cancellation, Creative Assembly has announced that its looking at making an unknown number of its staff redundant.
In a statement released to Twitter, the developer wrote: “We have made the incredibly difficult decision to begin a redundancy consultation process in some areas of our UK operations, alongside ending development of Hyenas. This may, unfortunately, result in job losses.
“We fully understand that this has a significant impact on our people whether they are directly affected or not—which we are truly sorry for.”
An attempt will be made to reallocate as many roles as possible, the studio says, in order to “minimise any job losses.” Creative Assembly called the game’s cancellation and potential redundancies “a difficult moment,” but maintained that “our commitment to our projects and our players has not changed.”
Original story: A mere two weeks after wrapping up an open beta, Sega has cancelled Creative Assembly’s zero-gravity heist shooter Hyenas.
It comes as part of what the publisher says is “structural reforms,” centred primarily around its European studios. Sega cites rapid inflation across the continent as leading towards decreased profitability, and a plethora of cancelled games as a result.
A notice translated from Sega Sammy reads: “In response to lower profitability in the European region, we have reviewed the title portfolio of each development base in Europe and the resulting action will be to cancel ‘HYENAS’ and some unannounced titles under development.” It’s unclear whether those unannounced titles were also under Creative Assembly, or if other studios in the region have had projects tossed to the scrap
It’s a real 11th-hour cancellation for Hyenas, which was revealed over two years ago and seemed like it was inching towards the finish line. Sega had noted in an investor call earlier in the year that Hyenas was proving to be “a challenging title,” adding that it was “striving to improve its quality towards the release on the front line of development.”
While I wasn’t super keen on the in-your-face metaness of it all when I peeped Hyenas at Gamescom last year, I saw a hero shooter brimming with potential. Even back then I was worried that the game wouldn’t survive long out of the gate, but it would’ve been nice to see it leave the gate in the first place.
It’s not the first time this year that Sega’s European studios have faced trouble. Relic Entertainment laid off 120 staff in May, just a few months after Company of Heroes 3 released. It cited an “incredibly difficult” year, as well as the ever-looming inflation issues facing the continent.
