Kwalee Labs Lays Off Nine-Person Luna Abyss Team After Launch
Kwalee Labs laid off the entire luna abyss development team of nine employees on Monday, June 16, weeks after the game launched on May 21. Hollie Emery said the decision was “completely outside of our control.” For the people who built the game, the change is immediate: the full team is now looking for work.
May 21 Launch, June 16 Layoff
May 21 is the date that now matters most to the team behind the game. Luna Abyss reached PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, and the release drew an 81 critics' score on Metacritic. That reception did not prevent the redundancies, which came less than a month later and wiped out the game’s entire small staff in one move.
Nine employees were affected, and that scale makes the cut more than a routine staffing adjustment. It removes the complete group that handled the project, rather than trimming a larger roster around the margins. Emery’s note on LinkedIn gave the same message in plain terms: the redundancies were outside the studio’s control.
Hollie Emery on the decision
“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 - and we are incredibly proud that [Luna Abyss] has finally seen the light of day (thank you to everyone who believed in us!),” Emery said. The line pairs pride in the launch with the speed of the reversal, leaving the project’s makers with praise for the game but no job security attached to it.
Matt Miller wrote that “While it shares much in common with the recently released Saros, including cosmic horror elements and bullet hell dodging of multi-hued attacks, Luna Abyss has a lot to recommend a playthrough all on its own.” That favorable read helps explain why the layoffs landed as a sharp break rather than a response to a plainly failed release. The team shipped, the game arrived on three platforms, and the staff that made it is now searching for new work.
For employees, the practical consequence is simple: the project has ended for them even though the title remains available. The remaining question is not whether the launch happened — it did, on May 21 — but how a nine-person team that just brought a game to market can be dispersed so quickly afterward.
