It’s certainly a sad day for the gaming industry, as we have to report two major studio closures in one day.

Jake Solomon, a veteran game designer best known for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns, announced the closure of Midsummer Studios. Solomon founded the studio after leaving Firaxis. The team was working on a narrative life simulation game for which they had already raised $6 million in seed funding. Rather than taking the traditional sandbox approach of The Sims, the genre king, Solomon built the game around player-driven storytelling. The system-based approach combined conflicts, relationships, and consequences to create compelling, episodic personal stories. The characters would have had jobs, love lives, and competing desires. Failure would have been seen as a narrative opportunity, not a dead end, in the spirit of improvisational theater. There would be no “game over” screen.

The game was designed to be open-ended and ongoing with no fixed ending. Solomon expressed his hope that a thriving modding community would develop over time. The game would have been a single-player experience built with Unreal Engine 5. It would have had a stylized visual approach and would have been intentionally kept small and sustainable for the team. Solomon announced the closure in a tweet and shared a short pre-alpha recording of the game, codenamed Burbank.

“We built a studio and made a game, and I’m proud of both. Before we close the doors at Midsummer Studios, I’d like to give you a sneak peek at Burbank, the game we poured our hearts into. It’s like ‘Life Sims + The Truman Show,’ but it’s more than that. I believe that people are storytellers and want them to share the stories and characters they can dream up. Burbank lets you do just that. There are moments while playing this game when the characters come alive in ways we’ve never experienced before. For an old game developer like me, that’s special. What you’re about to see is definitely pre-alpha. This game was my dream, and our team made it come true. Watch and dream with us,” Solomon wrote.

He later acknowledged that Burbank‘s characters used artificial intelligence for memory, thinking, and speech. This allows players to create any character and insert it into any story. However, the graphics were entirely human-made. This is yet another closure for the gaming industry in difficult times.

Forrás: WCCFTech

We built a studio, we made a game, and I’m really proud of both. Before we close the doors at Midsummer Studios I’d like to share a glimpse of Burbank, the game we poured our hearts into.

It’s like “Life Sims + The Truman Show,” but it’s more than that. I believe people are… pic.twitter.com/RuYvDhdEZO

– Jake Solomon (@SolomonJake) February 19, 2026