It has been two weeks since Sony announced that it was unprecedented step of unrelease Unity and it has been almost as long since the ill-fated sci-fi shooter was officially taken offline. In the meantime kotaku understands that the developers at Firewalk Studios are in limbo about their future as they wait for Sony’s decision on what comes next Unity and the team.
Whatever happens, game director Ryan Ellis will not be at the helm. He previously worked at Bungie, where he was creative director for Fate 2, Ellis left the company in 2017 to lead the development of what later became Unity. He told Firewalk staff last week that he would step down from his role as game director and instead take on a support role, according to three sources familiar with the change.
Sony did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ellis was primarily responsible for Unitywhich, despite praise for its underlying shooter gameplay feel, failed to attract an audience, with analyst Simon Carless Estimate of IGN that the $40 PVP-only game had only sold around 25,000 copies, an abysmal number considering not only its budget but also the PlayStation first-party brand it represented. Sony acquired Firewalk in 2023 for an undisclosed sum after the game had been in production and promoted for years Unity both at the PlayStation Showcase in May this year and at the Showcase in 2024.
“Ryan believed deeply in this project and in bringing players together through the joy of it,” said a former developer who felt Ellis put a lot of himself into the game, which led to a lot of stress. “Regardless of the fact that there were things that could have been done differently during development… he’s a good person and full of heart.”
Sources told kotaku that Ellis was too emotional to speak during a post-release studio meeting after it became clear that the game was a flop. In an interview on September 3, PlayStation blog post announcement UnityEllis wrote that “aspects of the game and our initial release have not been received as we intended.” He added that the team will “explore options, including ways to better reach our players” and work to “find the best path forward.”
Some outsiders speculated that Unity could be relaunched towards the end of this year or early 2025 as a PS Plus exclusive or free-to-play game to get more players to try it out. The game’s existing content roadmap spanned three seasons, complete with the promise of expensive weekly cutscenes that would tell the story of Unity‘s world and characters.
But for many in the studio, it is still not clear what will happen next, three sources said kotakuYou are pessimistic Unity will return, and some have been asked to consider suggestions for something entirely different that Firewalk, which currently employs about 150 to 170 people, could work on next. There has also been speculation among some employees that the studio could be used as a co-development for one of Sony’s countless other first-party projects currently in production.
Others believe that mass layoffs are the most likely consequence of UnityThe failure of the studio, including the possible closure of the entire studio, as sources report, kotaku is one of the more expensive studios in the PlayStation portfolio per capita. Some developers are updating their resumes and portfolios, some have already left the studio early, and others are waiting to see what a potential severance package will look like before deciding what to do next.
Sony has deep cuts at the beginning of this yearwhich included the discontinuation of several games and the closure of the PlayStation London Studio. But since its competitor Microsoft recently laid off employees, another 650 employees from the Xbox gaming departmentand with the end of another fiscal quarter approaching, more cuts may be on the way.
