Even success is not enough anymore.
The full development team behind Luna Abyss, the cosmic horror shooter released on May 21, has been fired just weeks after the game launched to a warm reception. Publisher Kwalee has parted ways with the entire team at Kwalee Labs, the subsidiary responsible for the game, including Kwalee Labs CEO and production director Hollie Emery herself. Kwalee, a UK company founded more than 15 years ago and best known historically as a hypercasual mobile developer and publisher, has not officially addressed the news, which instead emerged through Emery's LinkedIn post.
"Completely Outside of Our Control"
In her post, Emery confirmed that as of June 16, all nine members of the team were let go, describing it as "a decision that was completely outside of our control" and noting that the entire team is now available for work. She struck a notably gracious tone given the circumstances, writing that the team was "enamoured by the love and support" Luna Abyss received from both the industry and critics, and calling the game "the highlight of our careers" despite the many challenges faced along the way. Emery also used the post to highlight the LinkedIn profiles of everyone affected, a group spanning character artists, a lead game designer, environment artists, a narrative designer and writer, and programmers.
A Studio Dissolved Soon After It Was Absorbed
Interestingly, Kwalee Labs was previously the independent studio Bonsai Collective, which merged with Kwalee and rebranded under the Kwalee Labs name only last year. That makes this less a case of a one-off subsidiary being wound down after a single project, and more an acquired studio being dissolved less than a month after delivering the game it was brought in to finish. Luna Abyss itself casts players as a prisoner forced to explore a derelict megastructure beneath the surface of a moon called Luna, blending bullet-hell combat with atmospheric horror in a style critics compared favourably to the likes of Returnal and Metroid Prime.
Success That Wasn't Enough
The issue I have with this is that Luna Abyss did not flop exactly. The game launched at $30 across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series XS, arrived day-one on Xbox Game Pass, and earned a Very Positive rating on Steam at around 86% alongside a Metacritic score of 81, with Polygon going so far as to call it "quietly one of the best shooters of 2026." Neither that critical goodwill nor the visibility of a Game Pass deal proved enough to keep the team employed. The cuts also land amid a brutal week for the wider industry, arriving alongside reports that Microsoft is closing Ninja Theory and negotiating the potential spin-offs of Compulsion Games and Double Fine under Xbox's new cost-cutting drive. For the Luna Abyss team, the contrast between the game's reception and the studio's fate is a pointed reminder that, in the current climate, shipping a good game is no guarantee of surviving to make another.
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