Bandai Namco liquidated Reflector.
The board announced the resolution on 10 November, six years after acquiring the Montreal studio outright through Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe in September 2020.
The statement “The Group continuously reviews its business portfolio and intra-Group developmental structure for its medium- and long-term growth and to enhance corporate value. After comprehensively considering future business plans, necessary additional investment, and the possibility of profitability and business continuation, the Company has decided to discontinue Reflector’s business, dissolve, and liquidate it.”
Bandai Namco will lose roughly around €21 million in its third-quarter results for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2027.
Liquidation will complete once local procedures finish. No timeline has been given.
What it was meant to be
For starters Reflector wasn’t acquired to make a game. The studio was acquired to build Unknown 9 as a transmedia property, spanning the game plus an audio drama podcast, novels and a comic series. The studio was also going to work on an existing Bandai Namco IP's.
Unknown 9: Awakening arrived on 18 October 2024, an AA action-adventure about a young woman drawing power from another dimension. Reception was pretty mediocre.
Within the month the studio released 18% of its staff. The wider Unknown 9 franchise was cancelled soon after on low sales. The work on an existing Bandai Namco property never went ahead.
What’s closing now is what remained after all of that: a studio with one released game and no franchise left to support.
The website has a quote that explains the situation “We’d love to fill you in on the new game we’re making, but we’d have to get you to sign an NDA first. Stay tuned.”
The people
Bandai Namco’s is filing a corporate notice and says nothing about staff.
The studio was founded in December 2015, reportedly by Alexandre Amancio and Guy Laliberté, and has been shedding people since late 2024.
It’s the second studio closure in a fortnight after BioWare, and sits in a year that has also taken Polyarc, Complexity, Evil Geniuses and ENCE, with Ninja Theory in closure consultation and Arkane Lyon’s deadline four weeks away.
More:Tekken Producer Katsuhiro Harada Joins SNK as CEO of New VS Studio After 31 Years at Bandai Namco
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