Four months after the failure of Reflector Entertainment’s first game, Unknown 9: Awakening, the company has announced the sweeping changes leading to its future.
Unknown 9 was a big concept transmedia / media mix project, bringing in together a podcast, graphic novels, and text novels, to promote what was planned to be five video games creating its universe. Unfortunately, the first game in the series, Unknown 9: Awakening, flopped critically and commercially when it launched last October on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
As a result, Reflector announced layoffs of as much as 18 % of their staff as early as November, the month after its release. At the time, the future of the Unknown 9 IP and of Reflector Entertainment itself wasn’t clear.
The big fear is that the company could close down, but in our estimation that could not even be the worst possible outcome. The worst could be what happened to Ascendant Studios, the developer behind Immortals of Aveum, another new original title that failed commercially and critically.
Ascendant Studios were furloughed last April, meaning their staff was not allowed to find new work while they weren’t receiving pay. To this day, the public does not know if the company exists and/or if those employees were allowed to exit.
Thankfully, while there’s bad news today, Reflector has a brighter future. In a statement on LinkedIn, Reflector CEO Herve Hoerdt announced that they were no longer making new Unknown 9 games. Although he curiously did not refer to the IP by name, his description makes it clear that he is referring to Unknown 9.
Hoerdt went on to confirm that the company will go through redundancies and will have further layoffs, which also affects back-office staff. But Reflector is not shutting down as a result.
Instead, they will be taking a “single project approach” for the “imminent future.” Hoerdt also says they already have a project assigned to them by their owner, Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe.
Reflector and their staff is fortunate. While Ascendant Studios remained independent of Immortals of Aveum’s publisher, Electronic Arts, Reflector and Unknown 9 was purchased by Bandai Namco Europe. And Reflector is fortunate twice over, because Bandai could have chosen to close the studio themselves, and chose to keep it instead, albeit as a smaller studio.
We wish the best for the staff now leaving Reflector Entertainment, and we hope they can find their way back in to the video game industry. It’s hard not to see that Bandai Europe just announced The Blood of Dawnwalker and not think that Reflector may become a secondary or support studio for Rebel Wolves’ game. For what it’s worth, it would be amusing if Tekken suddenly got its first Canadian studio, but we aren’t counting on it.
We have transcribed Hoerdt’s announcement below, in the interests of transparency and to curb misinformation.
Today, I informed our teams that I made the decision to not greenlight further work on a future project that was in conceptualization phase and this terminating this development line.
Continuing this project would not have been sustainable for the future of the studio. Regrettably, this also means that there will be redundancies following this decision.
This decision correlates directly with the failure of the studio’s ambitious and courageous first project, a new IP with a rich transmedia universe. The performance of the release didn’t come near the company expectations, after numerous timeline adjustments and investments, both financially and other, and didn’t warrant any further exploration in this universe.
Unfortunately, this also affects back-office staff, bringing the support teams in line with the single project approach the studio will adopt for the imminent future. Where possible, staff will be assigned to this project, based on an existing Bandai Namco IP, which is shaping up very well.
Reflector Entertainment will be providing adequate severance packages, extended health benefits for affected staff and their families, continued access to emotional, mental health and counselling services and finally, proactive career planning support to set them up for future success.
Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe will continue investing on creating Western content for global audiences, in line with the Group’s vision.
