7 Years of Work, 317 Peak Players, 0 Jobs Left

"We're enamoured by the love and support it received both by our industry and critically by journalists and media. Whilst we faced many challenges along the way, it has been the highlight of our careers."

That's Hollie Emery, CEO of Kwalee Labs, writing on LinkedIn about the cosmic horror shooter their team spent seven years making. The next line of the same post announces that every single person on that team, including Emery, has been made redundant. Luna Abyss launched on May 21, 2026. Less than a month later, the studio that built it no longer exists. As first reported by Game Informer, the decision affected all nine members of the development team.

Emery stated the layoffs were "completely outside of our control," which points squarely at parent company Kwalee making the call. Kwalee Labs was formerly Bonsai Collective before merging with publisher Kwalee and rebranding under the Labs name last year. Kwalee itself has not publicly commented on the decision.

The numbers here are brutal in their contrast. Luna Abyss holds an 81 on Metacritic, a score most indie studios would celebrate for years. On Steam, it sits at 'Mostly Positive' with 86% approval across 599 user reviews. Critics praised its level design, art direction, and the kind of tight movement-shooter feel that gets compared to Doom and Returnal. By every qualitative measure, the team delivered. But the game peaked at 317 concurrent players on Steam, and in this industry, quality without visibility is a death sentence.

A Game Pass Couldn't Save Them

Luna Abyss was available day one on Xbox Game Pass, which should have been a lifeline for discoverability. For a $29.99 indie shooter from a nine-person team, Game Pass exposure is supposed to be the difference between obscurity and a real audience. It clearly wasn't enough. Whether that's a failure of marketing, timing, or the sheer volume of games competing for attention on the service, I don't know. But it's hard to look at this and not wonder what Game Pass inclusion actually does for smaller titles when even an 81-rated shooter can't break through the noise.

I keep coming back to the seven years. Development started in 2019, back when Bonsai Collective was still independent. Nine people spent the better part of a decade on a single game, shipped it to genuine critical acclaim, and were let go before the launch month was even over. Emery's LinkedIn post lists every laid-off team member by name and role: character artists, environment artists, a lead game designer, a narrative designer, programmers. These aren't abstract headcount figures. They're the people who built something good and got nothing for it.

This lands during a week where the layoff news is already relentless. Bungie is reportedly facing significant cuts next month as Destiny 2 winds down. Xbox studios including Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Double Fine are all reportedly negotiating their futures under threat of closure. Kwalee Labs doesn't have the profile of those studios, and nine jobs won't generate the same headlines as hundreds. But the pattern is identical: ship the game, lose the team, move on.

Luna Abyss is still available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. If you have Game Pass, it's sitting right there. Nine people spent seven years on it, and it deserved a bigger audience than 317 concurrent players.