Developers of the free monster hunting game Dauntless have been fired “most of the studio” less than two months after the game debuted on Steam. “Today is another difficult day at Phoenix Labs,” the company said in a LinkedIn post, which called the sweeping offer “part of unfortunate but necessary changes for our activities.” It was the fourth time in two years that the studio saw the reduction of work.
The studio has been owned by Blockchain Secretive Forte since 2023. Since that year, Phoenix Labs has witnessed three other dismissal rounds. The studio witnessed 140 jobs cut in May last year, while 34 jobs were malfunctioned in December 2023. Previously, the company cut 9 % of their workers in May 2023.
At the same time, there was the dissatisfaction of the player increasing with Dauntless, often welcomed when it came. Edwin calls it “a monster hunter for those who are scared”. But the recent review of players complains that free business tactics have increasingly intervened in the basic design of the game. The game has been on PCs and other platforms since 2019 but its appearance to Valve’s store in December last year had a big update called “Awakening”.
In addition to a series of changes, this update includes bizarre decisions that basically erase the progress of every player and weapons collections to zero. As you can expect, the game has quickly reached the “extremely negative” appreciation average on the store.
Shortly thereafter, this update was criticized by the former film studio’s producer, Jessie Leigh Gagnon, who said they were no longer “free to kill” in complaints discovered by Techpowerup.
“They withdrew the game mechanisms and manufacturing core,” she said in a LinkedIn post. “The nature of the murderers (the person I named just more than ten years ago), in fact, was killed.
The developers soon apologized to how to handle the update and realize the hatred of players for the process of processing the process and other changes. They gave money in the game and XP as part of this apology, saying they would work to make things better. “We realize the need to rebuild our trust and improve the way we join our community,” they said. It is difficult to see how this can happen – that may also be the one who wrote these words currently unemployed.
“We will share more details in the coming weeks,” Phoenix Labs talked about Dauntless’s future (and other studio’s games, Farm Farm Farm Farm Farm). But whatever they say will be hard to follow the face value, because previous claims have confirmed that the studios’ games will be “not affected” by periodic dismissal.
Above all of these concerns, we also have to remember that behind Phoenix Labs, there is a difficult blockchain company in the dark, forest suction in the world and typing decisions that no one can see in the iPhone. When Forte bought Studio, they were said to have guided management at Phoenix Labs not to tell anyone that the Blockchain group was the new owner. That is, uh, I believe that the term business is: Fucked up.
Forte’s only game studio during that time was Rumble Games mobile game developers. They were closed by Blockchain Company in July last year.
