Creative Assembly’s Hyenas canceled by SEGA. It was a multiplayer extraction shooter that was developed at the UK studio.
SEGA issued a warning to investors that it will record a loss for the financial year. It said, “Profitability has been lowered mainly in European bases.” This has resulted in SEGA implementing “structural reforms aimed at increasing efficiency”, and reviewed in-development games. “We have made the difficult decision to cancel some titles under the development as well as to reduce the fixed expenses,” SEGA said.
“In response to the lower profitability of the European region, we have reviewed the title portfolio of each development base in Europe and the resulting action will be to cancel Hyenas and some unannounced titles under development,” SEGA stated. “Accordingly, we will implement a write-down of work-in-progress for titles under development.”
Creative Assembly shared a statement to IGN to reveal that a redundancy consultation had begun and job losses may follow.
“Creative Assembly, part of Sega Europe, has announced the beginning of a redundancy consultation process, alongside ending development of Hyenas,” said the statement. “This decision affects areas of its UK operations, which may result in job losses.
“We understand that this has a significant impact on our people, whether they are directly at-risk of redundancy or not. Our people-first approach remains foundational to how we operate; the priority is to work with those whose jobs are at-risk and re-allocate them to other available opportunities at CA wherever possible.
“We are absolutely committed to delivering more exciting game experiences long into the future, which will delight both current and potential players all over the world.”
The official Twitter account also released a statement to confirm the cancellation. The development team revealed that it was a decision not made lightly, and admitted that their plans were ambitious. It seems it was just hard to complete.
Last month, SEGA admitted that Hyenas was a challenging title to develop. “We are unable to talk about this title because the details have not yet been announced at this time,” SEGA said. “As this is a challenging title, we are striving to improve its quality towards the release on the front line of development. We are also making final adjustments to its business model in parallel.”
