Cyan Worlds is one of the oldest indie studios in the world with 37 years of existence, but age doesn’t matter: they also had to resort to layoffs…

Less than a year after the release of the acclaimed Riven remake, Cyan Worlds announced on Bluesky last week that 12 employees had to be laid off. The studio listed the layoffs itemized, so you can call it very transparent. But let’s look at what Cyan Worlds wrote, so here’s the announcement:

“Today we would like to share some very unfortunate news with you. Despite our best efforts to avoid it, Cyan has made the difficult decision to reduce our overall staff – resulting in the layoff of twelve talented employees, approximately half the team – effective at the end of March. Industry conditions have put us in a difficult position where we must weigh the future health of our studio against the month-to-month realities of game development in 2025. Over the past year, we have been extremely transparent with the entire Cyan team about the choppy waters we find ourselves in and the dangers that lie ahead. While the news of layoffs came as no surprise to the team, it was (and still is) deeply saddening for all of us.

While we have done our best to cushion the landing for those affected with severance packages, we implore any fellow developers looking for world-class talent to reach out. For now, our top priority is to secure funding for our next project and to stabilize the studio. We’ve been around a long time, and we’ve been through tough times before. Our sincere hope is that we can continue to be around and provide the kind of experiences that only Cyan can deliver. As always, we are grateful for all the love and support from our amazing community of players,” Cyan Worlds wrote.

1

God this industry sucks right now.

I’m not affected by this layoff, but a lot of absolutely amazing people were—I’ve worked with this team for a year and a half now, and I’d write any one of them glowing recommendation at the drop of a hat.💙 https://t.co/4pr2WQUeAV

— Claire Hummel (@shoomlah) March 28, 2025

The studio’s lead visual designer, Claire Hummel, responded on Twitter. She says the game industry is in a terrible state. She wasn’t involved in the layoffs, but a lot of absolutely wonderful people were. She’s only been at the studio for a year and a half and would write a letter of recommendation for any of them in a heartbeat. Anyway, layoffs have been very common in the games industry in recent years, and Cyan Worlds seems to have been hit pretty hard.

No word on how the recent remake of Firmament and Riven sold. The former was funded on Kickstarter, the latter received good reviews. The Myst remake got a new free world a week and a half ago (we wrote about it in the news)…

Source: PCGamer