The Bandai Namco-published Unknown 9: Awakening was released last month on PS5 and PS4, and as is sadly commonplace these days, developer Reflector Entertainment has since confirmed a round of layoffs. The decisions will affect 18% of employees "who aren’t assigned to roles that our active projects require".
The news broke on Bluesky, with developers impacted spreading the word on LinkedIn. Reflector, whose total headcount is "between 50 and 200", confirmed the decision in a post on its website. It noted: "We are doing all we can to help [affected staff] through this difficult time, providing them with severance packages and access to medical, emotional, and career planning support."
We gave Unknown 9 a 7 in our review, praising its voice acting talent and strong writing. However, we weren't alone in noting the limited enemy variety and predictable level design. It seems we liked it more than most, with the game settling at a fairly dire 59 on Metacritic. At least on Steam, the game didn't manage to break 300 concurrents at launch, so we can't imagine it set the world on fire in terms of sales, either, despite a multi-platform release on Xbox and PC.