Parent company Prytania Media has shut down game studio ‘Possibility Space’ today, per reports from affected employees.
The parent company, founded by Undead Labs founder Jeff Strain and his wife, pinned the blame on a leak of “non-public information” to a yet-to-be-published Kotaku article. According to this email sent out to Possibility Space employees, sourced by Senior Reporter Nicole Carpenter @ Polygon, Jeff Strain “immediately got on a plane for an in-person meeting” with their publishing partner to disclose the information breach. After an expression of “low confidence” in the company and its project, both Strain and the publisher “mutually agreed” to cancel the project. Possibility Space’s website is no longer active as well, leading to a 404 on access.
This comes after months of turmoil for Prytania Media, whom according to IGN’s Rebekah Valentine has poorly handled prior furloughs at its other studios including the now-shuttered Crop Circle Games, with ex-employees expressing fear and anger to the reporter during the DICE Summit and Game Developers Conference. Also linked in the article is a letter from former Prytania Media CEO Annie Strain, who described the changes undergone at the company as “absolutely necessary changes” in response to a “permanent and sustained alteration and contraction of the industry we all know and love”.
Something to note is that in the email the cancelled title was called ‘Vonnegut’, a game that was mentioned by Windows Central’s Jez Corden back in late 2021 as a potential Xbox Publishing title. As that project was never announced and cancelled as of today, whether that was truly an Xbox project or not will never be known.
A poor situation all around, especially for the affected employees. If you have contacts and/or are looking to hire talented game developers, consider reaching out to ex-Possibility Space employees.
