In a notice announcing structural reforms predominantly within the European bases of the company, SEGA has revealed that it’s cancelling its multiplayer extraction shooter title, HYENAS, which was in development at UK studio Creative Assembly, along with a number of other unannounced projects.
HYENAS was first officially announced last year and has had multiple public showings at events and expos, as well as a very recent closed beta. It would have had players work in teams against others to steal pop culture memorabilia from huge space stations and ships with plenty of futuristic gadgets and zero-gravity gameplay.
SEGA’s statement revealed it’s likely to post losses of around 14.3 billion yen (nearly $150 million AUD) for the fiscal year as a result of the structural reforms, saying “We will implement reduction of various fixed expenses at several group companies in relevant region, centered on the Creative Assembly Ltd. We expect to incur one-time expenses related to reduction of fixed expenses.”
Creative Assembly has followed up the news by sharing the internal announcement to its employees, which confirms the studio has begun looking at redundancies in the wake of HYENAS’ cancellation. The studio says it’ll try to re-allocate staff from the project into other areas – it’s launching Total War: Pharaoh in just a couple of weeks and has at least one other game in development of which we don’t know the fate.
You can read the announcement from Creative Assembly below:
Following an internal announcement to our employees, please see the below statement: pic.twitter.com/b6LPonVagV
— Creative Assembly (@CAGames) September 28, 2023
“We have made the incredibly difficult decision to begin a redundancy consultation process in some areas of our UK operations, alongside ending development of HYENAS.
This may, unfortunately, result in job losses.
We fully understand that this has a significant impact on our people whether they are directly affected or not – which we are truly sorry for.
We have always aimed to operate as a ‘people-first’ studio; that is foundational to our values and culture. While we must go through this incredibly difficult process, we will prioritise supporting our people at every step.
For those whose jobs are at risk we will work to re-allocate them into other available roles within CA wherever possible, and ultimately minimise any job losses.
Our commitment to our projects and players has not changed; we will deliver more incredible experiences to our players all over the world for decades to come.
While this is a difficult moment across CA, we look forward to sharing more about our plans in the future.”
