Ruiner studio Reikon Games has reportedly laid off around 80% off its staff

Reikon Games, the studio behind 2017 action game Ruiner, has reportedly laid off around 80% of its staff.

According to sources speaking to Kotaku, layoffs have taken place at the independent studio, which is based in Poland.

Kotaku’s sources say that around four out of every five employees at Reikon have been laid off, making for a total of “60 to 70 people”.

The sources also told the site that the layoffs were “sudden and shocking”.

Reikon had been working on a sci-fi first-person shooter called Final Form, which was announced in 2021 as part of Plaion’s Prime Matter label.

During its announcement in 2021, Prime Matter said Final Form “expands beyond the edge of the known Universe, in a race against an unstoppable plague, to protect the last celestial being, essence of life and creation”.

However, while the trailer for the game remains on Reikon’s own YouTube channel, the version on Prime Matter’s YouTube channel has now been made private, and the status of the game is currently unknown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvWeffhGVck

The layoffs at Reikon are the latest in a long list of job terminations across the video games industry, a list that significantly grew in 2023 and shows no sign of stopping in 2024.

Earlier today it was announced that Microsoft will be laying off 1,900 staff across Activision Blizzard, Bethesda and Xbox.

This brought the total number of games industry staff who have lost their job in 2024 so far to more than 5,000, which is already more than half the total layoffs in 2023.