Unknown 9: Awakening studio makes major layoffs just a month after the game's release

A month after the release of its debut game Unknown 9: Awakening, Bandai Namco-owned Reflector Entertainment has announced that it is laying off 18% of its workforce so it can "efficiently deliver on our most pressing objectives while guaranteeing that every member of our team can meaningfully contribute to our ongoing projects."

Reflector said the layoffs weren't driven by "commercial success or external pressures," but simply the fact that there's currently not enough work to support the studio at its current size.

"With the recent release of Unknown 9: Awakening and our two key production lines entering the early stages of development, we must make sure that our staff is laser-focused on contributing to the projects that wholly benefit from their skillsets," general manager Marc-André Séguin wrote (via Game Developer). "As such, we are reducing our team by approximately 18% of Reflector’s total workforce, a decision that impacts people who aren’t assigned to roles that our active projects require."

Unknown 9: Awakening did not make an especially good impression when it launched in October. We liked what we saw of it in a pre-release preview well enough, but it currently holds a "mixed" rating on Steam, and more notably the all-time peak concurrent player count on the platform was just 285, a number that quickly tanked to double digits. We don't have access to console player numbers but it hasn't fared any better on other platforms critically, holding a not-great 59% aggregate score on Metacritic.

The actual number of people put out of work hasn't been specified, but Reflector's LinkedIn page indicates it has 51-200 employees, with 145 "associated members"—that is, LinkedIn users who list Reflector as their current workplace.