Wyrdsong may no longer be coming, given some news that just hit online.
Wyrdsong was a very promising upcoming title announced last August 2022 in that year’s Gamescom. The game is a described as an “occult historical fantasy RPG” with story elements of a fantasy and real world, with the fantasy world being based on Portugal.
There was a lot that seems to be going on on this title, and the studio was working on Unreal Engine 5, so it was likely planned for a current generation console release. What is most noteworthy about Wyrdsong is that the studio, Something Wicked Games, was itself made of several veteran game developers from Bioware and Bethesda.
If we were honest, as promising as Wyrdsong looked, we did suspect that Something Wicked Games was facing a huge challenge launching with their first title. 2022 was about the point in the pandemic when analysts and even some gamers could see the good times for the industry were about to end, as the world started to get out of global quarantine.
That quarantine was the reason the industry was doing so well in the middle of the pandemic, and now we have seen a wave of layoffs across the industry, that has already lasted a year, and shows no signs of slowing down, unfortunately enough.
And so we come to this news reported by Game Developer. Something Wicked Games senior animator Eric Webb revealed that the studio has laid off most of their staff. Two former staffers, programmer Andrew Woloszyn and writer Jessica Sliwinski, confirmed that they were among those who lost their jobs.
As Game Developer points out, for a new startup like Something Wicked Games to institute layoffs this early in their existence is a very bad sign. We don’t know the particulars of their founding, or funding, but it is not an exaggeration to say it is likely that the company is set to close.
While it’s possible that Something Wicked will shop their project around for other studios to make, or perhaps fired staff so they can rebuild the company, perhaps with more experienced people, it’s very telling that they made no announcement about these layoffs.
It is possible that they were not compelled to do so, for example, by investors, because the venture is a private company. Or, it’s possible that their funding source simply pulled their support for the project.
It is certainly unfortunate that we will never see what Wyrdsong was going to be. But let’s get it straight, there are thousands of projects like it that looked very promising on paper, but never ended up getting released.
What is more painful about this news, truly, is that more people have joined the wave of layoffs across the industry. While we wish we had better news to bring, this may be the initial salvo of what could be a series of layoffs and studio closures among smaller video game companies. Perhaps then, it will be clear this isn’t just an issue with venture capital funding, but something that’s closer to universal across the industry.
