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Phoenix Labs Confirms It Laid Off 'Majority of the Studio', Future of Dauntless & Fae Farm to Be Addressed

Christina Gonzalez Posted:
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Phoenix Labs confirmed “unfortunate but necessary changes” as the studio lays off the majority of employees. 

What this means for Dauntless and Fae Farm isn’t clear yet, but the company has plans to address the future of those two games in the coming weeks. The announcement was made via a post on the company's LinkedIn page, just one more painful announcement in a struggling industry. 

The team, after a long delay, announced in late August that Dauntless: Awakening would have a PC closed beta in September, before a full release on all platforms. The update wasn't a mere update, but it was intended to overhaul the game, improve the armor system, add new features, revamp the battle pass, add more Behemoths and revamp monetization. 

They also added Canisters, their version of lootboxes with What they cited as transparency since both free and premium battle pass users got some pulls. You could also buy pulls with Platinum, the premium currency. If you kept pulling, you’d be guaranteed to get the full set of cosmetics that season.The team also made some weapons available through earning weapon tokens or using Platinum.

Response to much of the update was that it was a disastrous series of moves. Not only the loot boxes, some of the systems were broken, there was a lot of criticism of paywalls and barriers (including to weapon unlocks) and a lack of customization, in addition to criticism of the armor changes. Initially, the team defended some of their changes before eventually changing course and vowing to regain the trust of the community. By that time, the harsh criticism and review bombing had grown.

We're not sure exactly what the future holds for Dauntless at this point, but unfortunately, more developers are now looking for new positions in a difficult time. 

(H/T Game Developer)


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Christina Gonzalez

Christina is MMORPG.COM’s News Editor and a contributor since 2011. Always a fan of great community and wondering if the same sort of magic that was her first guild exists anymore.